New year, same bad brand tweets.
Despite continual, exhaustive pleas from social media users for brands to stop taking part in every viral trend, popular meme, or noteworthy holiday celebration, the cringeworthy brand content persists.
The latest online outrage was sparked by Burger King UK, whose social media team thought it would be a good idea to fire off an International Women's Day thread that began with the words, "Women belong in the kitchen."
Yes, really.
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The thread went on to say that because only 20 percent of chefs are women, Burger King UK is "on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career." The restaurant chain also announced that it's launching a new scholarship program "which will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!"
The final two tweets in that thread are all well and good, but Burger King UK lost everyone with their delivery. The chain used a harmful, sexist stereotype to try to grab people's attention, then thought they could make everything fine by later revealing a "gotcha!"
The thing is, it's 2021, and we have to be better and demand better than this sort of tired, lazy, plainly offensive brand strategy.
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Think of how simple it would have been to write a single tweet including all the information in Burger King UK's thread instead of shining a spotlight on "Women belong in the kitchen." Heck, just announce the ways in which you're supporting women and call it a day. Leave the gimmicks, the schticks, and the poor attempts at being witty behind. They're embarrassing.
Burger King UK's tweet has received a fair share of backlash all morning, with celebrities and fans of the chain tweeting their disappointment.
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Amy Brown, who worked on Wendy's social media team in 2017, even responded to Burger King UK's brand fail by briefly changing her Twitter photo and display name to imitate the UK chain. Brown, who to this day has managed to create some of the only good brand tweets in history, has been trolling Burger King UK with a series of tweets about women from her recently rebranded personal account. (It's clear that unlike most brands, she remains exceptionally good at this.)
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After Brown's fake Burger King tweets started to gain attention, Fernando Machado the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Restaurant Brands International, the parent company of Burger King, weighed in on real chain's the controversy.
"Just hope people see thru the single tweet w/out context and understand the real intent behind this one," Machado tweeted. "If we stopped doing things because some stupid people do stupid things on the internet we wouldn't do anything. Our intention is good and I hope people can see thru that over time."
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In response to Machado's tweets, Brown replied, "Impact > intent. Like if I accidentally crashed my car into your house and then said 'My intentions were good!' my car would still be in your living room."
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Brands, if you're reading this, for the love of all things online, your social media strategies need serious work. In order to stop killing memes, stop offending people, and stop making the already colossal list of cringey brand fails longer, start thinking and talking things out with a diverse group of people, and if need be, start sitting things out.
Posting nothing is so much better than posting forced, poorly created content. The internet will still be there, even if you miss a sacred opportunity to tweet, and opportunities to show your "personality" will come again. We promise.
UPDATE: March 8, 2021, 3:28 p.m. EST Updated to include tweets from Fernando Machado, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Restaurant Brands International, the parent company of Burger King.
Topics Memes
