Last night a local San Francisco TV channel aired a story about Burger King’s ad-campaign in Spain and how it has offended the local Indian community, specifically the Hindus. The reason? Burger King’s latest in-store ad campaign featured Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, on a ham sandwich and therein lay the problem. Apparently the tagline in Spanish for the ad reads: A snack that is sacred. An Indian community leader has demanded an apology for Burger King’s snafu and said that he has not heard from the company in spite of having called them.

Probably the company was looking to create  a shock value points a marketing professor in the news clip. I guess the ad campaign did provide shock value not only to the customers, but to Burger King itself. It does not sound like the creators of the ad-campaign remotely thought this marketing campaign would backfire on them. This is not the first time Burger King has made a cultural boo-boo in its ad campaign points out AdAge.

I twittered about Burger King’s snafu and the response was instant ranging from how Burger King should apologize, and how the company did not display cultural sensitivity to there will be problems in India. Turns out Burger King does not operate in India as Asfaq points out in this tweet.

 Asfaq@kamla Yeah.. The funny part is, burger king has not even launched in India

arun4@kamla Burger King has had a couple of advertising fails in the recent past – Lakshmi in Spain, 7-incher in Singapore, Texican in Spain.

Prem Panicker wrote a thoughtful post on Burger King’s disastrous ad campaign and he put it very well when he noted:

No, this ad is absurd simply because it is bad advertising, period. There is no intelligence, no creative connect between the product and the visual.

I called and spoke to the PR department at Burger King, who requested that I send then an email and in response they will send me their official public statement. Ah! but thanks to AdAge article I already know that Burger King has withdrawn the in-store advertisement from 3 of its stores in Spain. Will anybody be able to talk to me? I got a well-rehearsed answer, “Ma’am if you send me that email with the questions we will get back to you.”

The company has received quite a few phone calls about this advertisement campaign.

This ideas was one whose time had not come, and wonder if it will ever come at all? This is not the first time that a Hindu religious figure has been used to advertise a product and managed to offend the Hindu communities. There was a company that used a Hindu god to advertise their footwear…and another to advertise leather products. It is just not Hindu icons, but using religious icons inappropriately  for a product when there is no connection does not make any marketing sense what so ever.

What is amazing is that in this so-called globalized world, where there is much fusion and synthesis of different cultures such snafus continue to take place.

Photo credit: Rediff.com