March 12, 2021

Hey, 

How are you holding up? It’s been a year.

Monday was International Women’s Day. It always interests me to see who jumps in, who doesn't, and how well they execute it. This year, one brand managed to find itself in a whopper of a mess. Did you catch it? 

Burger King UK recognized the day by announcing a new scholarship that will help attract more women into leadership positions in the culinary industry. 

That sounds nice, right? What’s so troublesome about that? They announced via a multi-tweet thread. This was the first tweet: 

😬😱

Additional tweets shared the full context and goodwill of what they were announcing, but those weren’t the tweets screenshot and shared across the Internet. And if you have to backpedal to explain the joke, it probably needed a better setup. 

The Internet grilled the brand for being misogynistic. Marketing Leaders tripped over themselves to share hot takeaways from the incident like:  

• Brands shouldn’t be too edgy or clever on social media.
• Brands should stay out of political and social issues.

Except, these are the WRONG takeaways. The real takeaway is this: 

Understand where and how your messaging will be consumed and craft that message to mirror that behavior.  

Said simpler: You can't always use the same creative for online that you used for offline. 

A Print Campaign ≠ A Social Media Campaign.

I wasn’t there when this campaign came to life, but my hunch is the print ad came first. Seen below, it leads with the same provocative headline, this time with the benefit of a couple of hundred words of context and explanation beneath it.   

Many people were equally unimpressed with the print version, but I love a good “open letter” ad. But it doesn't mean you can’t take a print ad and rebirth it as a social media post.

Why not?

We Consume Information Differently Across Platforms.

Someone getting The New York Times at their doorstep doesn’t just consume that news. They greet it. When I have a magazine or newspaper in my hand, it is an EVENT, and it is something I prepare for. I have my coffee ready. I am sitting in my favorite chair. I devour it.  

That behavior is a world apart from how I consume information on social media. There, I’m in scan and react mode. I’m looking for something that catches my eye, stops my thumb, and compels me to like it, share it, or yell at it. 

Different mediums lend themselves to different user behavior. 

A message crafted to reach someone when they are at home with their paper is ill-effective on a person scanning and pecking.

Burger King assumed people would see their provocative first tweet and keep reading down the thread. But that isn’t what happened. People saw the tweet, got mad, and eviscerated them. And none of that should be surprising because it follows the pattern for exactly how social media users react. They react. 

Online advertising requires different creative than print.

Always? No. Often? Yeah.

Images usually serve to decorate the copy in print. The message comes first, and the visuals offer a nice backdrop to make that message easier to digest. 

It works oppositely for the web. The copy supports the visual.  

On the Web, the image is noticed first. It’s what stops the eye or a scrolling thumb. If the image blends in or is bland, it doesn’t matter how concise and clever the copy is. No one will ever get there.

There was an opportunity for Burger King to tell the story through visuals and let the copy serve as the punctuation. Had they paired that tweet with a powerful visual that conveys the story’s real weight, we’d be talking about it in an entirely different way right now. 

It’s a crime that Burger King did not consider how people would cut up and spread their message. Some people asked if Burger King should have simply tweeted out a photo of the print ad. 

Gosh no. 

Craft the message to match the medium.  They didn't need to publish the full print ad. They needed a social media execution of the campaign. 

This needed more planning.

I’m all about big swings and incendiary tweets. It’s practically my brand. But that lead-off tweet from Burger King needed more thought. It required a second more of pondering to consider:  

• How easy it’d be for someone to screenshot the first tweet and never come back for context.
• Tweet streams aren’t linear. You can't assume I’ll see the full thread. 
• Poking people might make it harder for the message to be received the way you want.
• That there was a smarter, more exciting way to position this. 

This felt like someone trying too hard to be clever without a full understanding of how social media works.  

Holy concept test, Batman. 

I don't think this campaign was misogynistic; I believe Burger King poorly executed it. I also think Burger King could have spared itself and seen a much greater ROI if they only took the time to concept test first. 

You'd make sure the car was functional before you revved it to 120mph on the road.

Why wouldn't you test your creative before throwing it to the masses?

Concept testing can be such a simple, cost-effective process and it was obviously not done here. Had anyone outside the campaign’s creators viewed this full execution, it would have been called out, tweaked, and improved.  

Instead, they sent it out and immediately killed the social component after an online uproar. How many times have we seen that? How many times do we have to continue to see it before brands who should know better finally act better? 

TL;DR

• Understand how people behave on a given platform and tailor your message and creative accordingly. 
• Use creative concepting to date your creative before you marry your creative.
• Five Guys has the best fast food burgers anyway. 

👉 National Get Over It Day

This week marked our favorite made-up social media holiday--National Get Over It Day. Some members of our team shared the things they're most ready to "get over."  Check 'em out.