April 4, 2011

Yuck - BK's Meat Math Commercial



Sometime during the NCAA tournament, Burger King introduced their 'BK Stacker' sandwiches with the above commercial. From the first time watching it, it struck me as odd. Here is my interpretation of it:

Opening shot: We see a sign reading 'Meat Mathematics Institute'.

Me: Mathematics Institute? What?

Then the voice over kicks in: "The world's foremost meat mathematicians were summoned by Burger King to solve this equation: How can we achieve maximum meat flavor for minimum money?"

Me: Yuck! Not real chefs in the kitchen, trying to achieve maximum TASTE, but scientists in a lab, trying to go for maximum FLAVOR! Yuck! This has artificial flavors, filler materials, and other disgusting ingredients, all cooked up in a science lab, written all over it! It brought memories of the movie Fast Food Nation back, instead of stimulating my taste buds.

Furthermore, they are trying to achieve it for "minimum money"? Oh my gosh... now they are telling us that they don't put very much into it (certainly not the best ingredients), and that they are a very cheap company, trying to save themselves as much money as possible when putting together the burgers they sell to us. It doesn't come across as savings for consumer, the way it was intended.

Last but not least, "achieving maximum meat flavor for minimum money" is an economic impossibility and misleading, because you can either try to achieve:

a) maximum flavor - at whatever cost associated with it (depending on the market price for wagyu kobe beef for example, and the exclusivity of the cheese on top)

- OR

b) minimum money - meaning you know what you want to sell the damn burger for ($1, $2, $3), you know the cost structure of the burger, which ultimately dictates how much real beef you can allow yourself as a company to put inside the burger.

Doing both - a) and b) is impossible. Anyway, the thought of scientists calculating my burger is stuck in my mind now, and I find it quite disgusting. I think I have had enough BK for a while.

No comments:

Post a Comment

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...