“Women belong in the kitchen.” Though, tweeted with good intentions, Burger King’s guerrilla campaign failed horribly. Now it is time to learn from their mistakes.

Guerrilla Marketing?

For most people the word “Guerrilla” is connected to war. This is more than fitting as the word itself is Spanish and means: ”little war”. Now the rise of social media created a new way to use guerrilla tactics – but this time in marketing and not in war.

Guerrilla marketing is a high risk, high reward strategy that is primarily used by small to medium sized businesses. Similar to the way it is used in the military, these tactics can give these smaller companies the marketing power to stand up to their much larger competitors. This is mainly achieved through surprising and sometimes even shocking marketing campaigns. They often mislead consumers in order to create a “wow” reaction. However, even big companies sometimes use guerrilla tactics to get ahead in their industry.

Burger King: Ingenious marketing or simply too much?

What happened? Burger King as an example

A great example for a big company using guerilla marketing is Burger King. With clever and provocative strategies, they often call attention to new events and products. However, there are always two sides to a coin. Even though, companies can receive high rewards such as increased brand awareness or increased consumer purchase intention, high risk strategies such as these can also fail spectacularly. For instance, Burger King’s Women’s Day 2021 marketing campaign failed horribly, as they did not do enough research on the market. During this campaign they tweeted:” Women belong in the kitchen.” (Burger King [BurgerKingUK], 2021) without giving any context. Afterwards, they wrote a follow-up post that introduced their new scholarship program that support female employees within their fast-food chain.

The aftermath of a failing campaign

While meant to be taken sarcastically this campaign got a lot of negative feedback describing it as using: “sexism for clickbait” (Becca [BeccaBeckery], 2021). It ended up being one of the worst digital marketing campaigns, thus becoming competition for even Pepsi and H&M in this category. Some argued that even putting this message into one tweet could have saved the campaign as many people oversaw the follow-up tweet. Some users even commented other sexist messages. Soon after getting so much negative feedback, Burger King deleted the tweet and apologised to their customers.

This catastrophe of a marketing demonstrates what can happen if one plays with fire. Burger Kings marketing team underestimated the situation and how offended people get. They though, as long as they support their Female employees, it would be okay to sarcastically use an offensive message. However, they are not alone. There are many other examples of big companies being tone-deaf on social media.

Lessons learned from mistakes

Especially, companies that use twitter have to learn from this fiasco. The first step is to use a clear message that creates a positive emotional response within the consumer once the “wow” effect has passed. It is important to highlight that aggressive and ironical marketing is effective and should be used. However, you have to understand the environment that is being targeted. This is one point in which the use of guerrilla tactics as a military and as a marketing tool align. Without knowledge of the environment and its “natives” guerrilla campaigns are doomed to fail.

References:

Burger King [BurgerKingUK]. (2021, March 8). Women belong in the kitchen. [Tweet]. Twitter. URL N/A as post is deleted

Becca, [BeccaBeckery]. (2021, March 8). Becca on [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/BeccaBeckery/status/1368920951098929157

Dailey, N. (2021, March 8). Burger King apologizes for saying “women belong in the kitchen” in a tweet advertising a new scholarship for female chefs. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/burger-king-apology-women-belong-in-the-kitchen-tweet-2021-3?r=DE&IR=T

Glenday, J. (2021, March 9). Burger King apologizes after ‘women belong in the kitchen’ tweet provokes backlash. The Drum. https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/03/09/burger-king-apologizes-after-women-belong-the-kitchen-tweet-provokes-backlash

Hutter, K., & Hoffmann, S. (2011). Guerrilla Marketing: The Nature of the Concept and Propositions for Further Research. Science Alert. https://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=ajm.2011.39.54