Burger King pulled an ad showing people eating its Vietnamese burger with oversized chopsticks after it was called racist






Burger King has come under fire for a recent advertisement that it briefly ran in New Zealand.

The brand rolled out a commercial for its new “Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp burger” depicting Burger King customers attempting to eat the new menu item with giant red chopsticks.

“Take your tastebuds all the way to Ho Chi Minh City with our Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp, part of our Tastes of the World range. Available for a limited time only,” the initial caption for the ad read on the brand’s now-deleted Instagram post.

Although Burger King has since removed the ad from its social media platforms, some Twitter users, including Maria Mo, captured a video of the controversial commercial. “I couldn’t believe such blatantly ignorant ads are still happening in 2019, it honestly took me a second to work out what the heck I was looking at,” Mo told HuffPost. “I was watching it thinking there must be some kind of layered twist ― only to realise, no, there was no twist, it really was that base level.”

Many users on social media expressed their discontent with the ad, which they claimed used chopsticks as a comedy vehicle and was culturally insensitive.

According to The New Zealand Herald, the same Burger King advertisement was barred from distribution on television in March after New Zealand’s Advertising Standards Authority claimed that it was “enticing people to overeat” because it concluded with the words, “Just need another three.”

Some compared Burger King’s ad to the Dolce & Gabbana commercial that showed a model eating Italian food with chopsticks. In November 2018, the fashion house launched an ad campaign featuring a Chinese model eating traditional Italian food with chopsticks. Like Burger King, the brand removed its own controversial ad after it sparked backlash on social media.



Later, Dolce & Gabbana co-founder Stefano Gabbana allegedly responded to a critic of the ad with racist language via Instagram direct message, and brand leadership subsequently announced that a show in Shanghai was “rescheduled due to reasons” that were unspecified.

Representatives for Burger King did not immediately respond to INSIDER’s request for comment.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/burg ... ons-2019-4

What a dumb and dumber ad. There's no twist or joke, just as Maria Mo above says.

Manufactured controversy to increase exposure of the product.

Seems to me their marketing people ran out of ideas to promote basically unhealthy food such as this deep fried chicken with Vietnamese chili sauce burger. I think that's what it is by the looks of it and they refer to it as 'tendercrisp'.

So, they resort to finding some gimmick like this with chopsticks...to get attention in an attempt to make it humorous.

I do think though, the world has become far too precious about some of these things..

The media will take a minority commenting on something and blow it up as a world wide issue (like this ad) all they do is give advertising to the company / product that the complaint is about.

Besides if this ad offends people than they should go and get a skin transplant from something thicker than their paper thin one that gets so damaged by this stuff.

I stopped reading at Huff Post.

Freightdog wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2019 8:29 pm Opens can of worms...

What's the problem with eating spaghetti (or anything else) with chopsticks? I see plenty of folk eating rice with spoons, forks, hands. Spaghetti shares a lot of similarities with noodles....

Next we'll be careful not show people eating using both knife and fork in coordination, in case we offend certain cousins.
As above- either contrived controversy, or simply too many people being overly precious.

I draw the line at eating soup with chopsticks though. I haven't done that since I was 5. Or was it 35?

Nothing that I can see, but in the Dolce & Gabbana ad campaign featuring a Chinese model eating traditional Italian food with chopsticks, reading between the lines of this:

Later, Dolce & Gabbana co-founder Stefano Gabbana allegedly responded to a critic of the ad with racist language via Instagram direct message, and brand leadership subsequently announced that a show in Shanghai was “rescheduled due to reasons” that were unspecified.

It's obvious they cancelled the Shanghai event through fear of upsetting the Chinese and the negative affect it would have on their brand.

I didn't include the negative twitter comments from the original linked news story above.. however, all are from Chinese who have taken offence. Presumably, they see that using chopsticks in this manner is mocking their culture. Very precious with no sense of humor imo.

Poor form by Burger King. They make it seem like Vietnamese people tend to eat with chopsticks, I’m offended by it.