Burger King: Yup, It’ll Blow Your Mind Away
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Advertising in today’s modern society is a crucial aspect in selling products or informing people of services and issues. In 2009 alone, advertisers spent $140 billion on advertisements. (Howard, Theresa. 2009) The amount of money and effort put into creating such attention capturing ads is staggering and spending is only going up. One can see ads everywhere from TV commercials to magazine ads for just about anything. They are the basis of buying and selling goods and services which is why advertisers spend so much money on them. There are some advertisements that are targeted to specific categories of people and some ads may even be subliminal in nature. One such ad is a Burger King magazine advertisement. The advertisement was made specifically for Burger Kings division in Switzerland and advertises their “BK Super Seven Incher” burger. The advertisement is chock full of subliminal messages stretching the limits of what one would call a “clean” advertisement.
The basic logic behind this Burger King advertisement is very subliminal in that it advertises it’s “Super Seven Incher” hamburger but also creates a very sexually explicit mental image for one from an older more mature audience. The advertisement is proportioned in a way that the first most noticeable aspect one sees are the words “It’ll Blow Your Mind Away”. This would make one believe that the “BK Seven Incher” is a phenomenally good hamburger if it wasn’t for the picture behind the words. To the left one can see a woman who can be considered physically attractive by modern day standards. The one thing about the woman that stands out the most is the fact that she has a surprised look on her face and also has her mouth wide open. The lipstick on her mouth is a bright red which draws attention to it. She appears to be staring very strangely ahead of her almost as if she’s in a trance. The picture is complete in what it is trying to portray when one looks to the right and sees the “BK Super Seven Incher” heading towards the woman's mouth. All of these elements together bring together an image that is very sexually explicit in every means of the word. One would have a very hard time not noticing the sexuality of the advertisement.
The text below the visual greatly deepens the explicitness of the visual by using very strong key words. The word “Blow” in the main tag line of the advertisement is one of the strongest words that greatly describes the hidden sexual meaning of the ad. To add on to that, in the very bottom right corner of the ad is a description of the hamburger that includes strong key words such as “Desire”, “Long, Juicy”, and “Yearn”. If it was not for the visual, the text description would not be so sexually explicit and vulgar. The text in its context basically signifies that “Bigger is Better” in its sexual reference. The fact that Burger King even named it the “BK Super Seven Incher” is called “Branding”. It is used when a product is given a certain name in order to improve the possibilities of the advertisements.
Emotionally the visual is very strong in the message that it portrays. It basically screams “This hamburger is HUGE!” even though it has a secret hidden meaning as well. It does a good job at what it intends to do which is to capture peoples attention and make them remember the advertisement. If this was not the case then the investors for the advertising company that produced this ad would be out of a job. One use of lighting in the advertisement is the luminescence of the woman making her the main focus of the ad. One can see this as “Woman love seven inch objects”. This increases the emotional appeal to men as this advertisement is targeted towards them.
The credibility of this advertisement is very questionable. Although it is an advertisement from a known corporation, the idea that it is trying to sell a hamburger with a sexually explicit advertisement is a bit sketchy. It is trying to say that one will become “Sexually Enlightened” by eating such a “Long” and “Juicy” hamburger. This puts the credibility on this advertisement very low even though it does a good job of sticking to ones mind.
One can say that advertisements today are the leading factor in driving sales for products. The idea that any one product can make anyones life better appeals to everyone. This Burger King ad is no exception to the growing number of explicit, sexual ads garnered to catch our attention.
