Over the holidays I saw a Burger King ad, this campaign below from Ogilvy.

I immediately loved it, I saw it on instagram and thought it was one of the photography accounts I follow. But no ! When I started reading it, an advert! Something directly relevant to the course for once. 

The premise of “ it must be so good you think it’s chicken “, rolls into “ general confusion” on which they then move into other confusing thoughts is lighthearted and interesting. 

It seems a production of what we have been, and continue to be taught at SCA. The execution however isn’t. We’re often criticised for long-copy ads and advised against doing them. The thought being you need to grab someone’s attention and they don’t tend to do that. 

I understand it but as it’s something I like, I sometimes wish I could do it. 

Generally, I try to heed this advice but have now and again pushed against it, like when I used copy to draw out a graphic on a brief a month or two back, assuming nobody would read it or at the very least pretend to. This specific print poster was mentioned by the client so maybe once in a while isn’t so bad, although it used type, it wasn’t really a ‘type’ poster as you couldn’t really read it ( purposely). 

Alternatively, this Burger King ad makes no apologies about the copy doing essentially all of the leg work, something I was happy to see. The placement was kind of weird I thought, but in a way it made it look more interesting. The aesthetic choices were also at odds with what we have been taught. The type of content, placement and interesting photography style all came together to form a campaign far from my perception, and I’m assuming many other people’s perception of Burger King as a brand at current. It seemed a rather perplexing ad as it follows the ‘rules’ in some ways and doesn’t in others. I was glad to see it and have brought it up to a few people since, as it moves away from the PR, content-centred advertising that seems to have become more common in recent years; where the line of advertising is blurring with PR. Relegating in some ways the ‘art’ of advertising, depending on where you stand on it. This was something I was trying to explain to my extended family, some of whom were adamant there were only ‘marketers or PR’ both of whom they counted within advertising. 

I had a thought that maybe advertising would shift as a whole industry to more ‘stunt’ esque work, something I was hoping wouldn’t happen. I had really no reason to think it wouldn’t but this campaign pleased me as it showed there are still people making ‘ad ads’ from large, well-known agencies and importantly, they actually run. 

@sugarmiwk