A Look Inside Advertising

Burger King recently just released a new advertising campaign featuring different celebrities from David Beckham to Sofia Vergara. Each celebrity has their own commercial and each one features them as a sex god or goddess, with each celebrity ordering or making something Healthy. David Beckham’s commercial shows him coming up to the counter and ordering one of BK’s new healthy smoothie. The employees then get all excited and zone out because of the sex appeal David Beckham has. 

In Sofia Vergara’s commercial she is actually one of the BK employees and is making one of the new healthy salads for a customer. When she goes to hand the salad to the customer; a bunch of men come running up and wants the same salad from her.

 Each ad uses background music that almost makes you feel like you’re watching a Disney fairy tale movie and the person fantasies about the celebrities as if they just found their soul mate.

The whole campaign is pretty well thought out. They hit a few different persuasive techniques with these commercials; Bandwagon, famous-person testimonial, and plain-folks. Using David Beckham and Sofia Vergara hits the famous-person testimonial. People see them eating Burger King then they will want to do the same. They also use David and Sofia’s sex appeal towards plain-folks and how they react towards their hotness. If celebrities eat Burger King and look amazingly hot, then why shouldn’t everyone?  Each commercial has a little story line to it which I think makes it more of a myth and less than an association principle.

The ad campaign isn’t really a new approach to the whole selling a product. Companies have been using sex for a long time to sell a product. This is not really a new approach that Burger King is taking to sell their new healthy food items. I would say though that mashing up the two, sex appeal with healthy food items is kind of a new approach; at least for fast food chains. Other companies have used sex appeal but never mixed the two.  In the past fast food companies have used mostly just healthy food to sell itself. I think that they made a good choice with the celebrities that they did use. David Beckham is an athlete, and is about staying in shape. Sofia Vergara is a healthy woman but is not stick in bones. She is about staying in shape and healthy. I think that if they went celebrities that were models then it would be harder to pull off.

The commercial definitely has its appeal and went with celebrities that are big right now. I was sitting with a friend when I started to watch them and she started talking along with the ad. Not because she is a huge fan of Burger King but because she remembers the commercials and the words from it.  It definitely is a commercial campaign that is going to stick around and people will remember. I think that this is a campaign that will be effective towards the fast food loving but wanting to be healthy person or will even be effective towards fans of these celebrities. People are always looking for healthy ways to eat fast food and Burger King is on the right track with this. I’m not a fan of fast food or eating out, but these commercials made me think about giving Burger King another try to check out their new healthy food. I would say that they hit on the mark with going with this campaign. How can someone say no to sex and food that is good for you? 
I've never really looked in to advertising campaigns or took a minute to think about they are really trying to get across. I'm always quick to turn my head or just judge them based off a first glance. If there is humor in them I'll stick around to enjoy but it does not really win me over. Doing this assignment gives me a new perspective on advertising campaigns.  I enjoyed going through the steps and analyzing this advertising campaign and find myself using the steps with other commercials. I'll sit through a commercial now and wont judge it right off the bat, but instead I will take the time to figure out the persuasive techniques and judge the commercial based off the techniques I learned.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/sofia-vergara-burger-king-commercial_n_1438542.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-mct-burger-king-sees-improvement-in-u.s.-sales-20120510,0,6749885.story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/burger-king-new-menu_n_1432119.html