Most of us know and love Burger King for their juicy cheeseburgers and borderline addictive fries, and that is usually the extent of thought we give to the restaurant. The reputation this chain has of being a convenient, but unhealthy place for bored teenagers and families on the go makes it all the more surprising that an advertisement they recently released has such a progressive and moving message. Out of all the prominent establishments and public figures in the United States, Burger King has stepped forward as one of the leading anti-bullying advocates by highlighting how often people, even adults, turn a blind eye to bullying.
So how exactly did they pull this off? The advertisement they released, which is about two minutes long, involves a social experiment where a group of teenage actors were planted in a Burger King restaurant and one actor was “bullied’ by the others both physically and verbally, to see if any customers there would intervene and stand up for the bullied teenager. Meanwhile, they had an employee squashing and punching burgers before serving them to make them “bullied” burgers. How do these two things going on simultaneously make a statement about how bullies and a lack of people standing up to them is a problem in the United States? Burger King kept track of how many people were willing to say something about the bullying going on in the restaurant versus how many people were willing to complain about their burgers being crushed and the results were very disappointing. While 95% of customers complained about their “bullied” burgers, only 12% did anything to stand up for the bullied high schooler.
Hopefully this advertisement will open people’s eyes to how terrible of a problem bullying is in our community and be the call to action they need to be upstanders instead of bystanders. The link to the video can be found here.