International Women’s Day is celebrated in March to commemorate women’s struggle for gender equality. Although the day appointed for this is the March 8, throughout the month the importance of women in our society is highlighted. In this way it is usual to see awareness campaigns or support initiatives on the fight against gender inequality. We ourselves have published a report in which
It is a day in which many companies usually carry out campaigns, both to support this fight and to promote their brand. However, these campaigns are not always successful and if they are not handled properly they can spark a great deal of controversy… and cause serious damage to the brand. This has been the case in a recent tweet by the fast food company, Burger King.
A thread of tweets that stayed in the first… and clearly controversial
The Burger King account in kicked off international women’s day by posting a thread, where the initial thread reads “Women belong in the kitchen.” Which was followed by the idea of his campaign, about inequality in the culinary profession where only 20% of chefs are women. Something they seek to help solve with a new initiative called HER(Helping to match restaurants for its acronym in English).
This new campaign aims to generate scholarships for franchise employees who want to build a career in the culinary world, creating a bridge to close the gap between men and women in this demanding field.
Certainly this inequality is something latent that can be seen in different documentaries or studies carried out. We can even see it in the list of the 100 best chefs for the past 2020, where only five are women. Starting from this point, the Burger King initiative is really an interesting proposal to support the struggle of the female population.
controversy of the tweet
However, in the ones you have to be careful how things are said, since due to the impersonality of the platform they are usually left to the reader’s interpretation. If we look at that first tweet in isolation, it has a lot to do with the culture of machismo who sees women only to serve in the home, and therefore, in the kitchen.
It is for this reason that the negative responses to this campaign were not long in coming, as we can see in the following tweets, some of which are loaded with a quite marked parody tone:
All the companies are going to end up tweeting “at ChocoFlakes we strongly support fascism” just for people to quote it and freak out and talk about them it’s going to be hell my God
— かみました (@Nindele)
The cm of the Burger King seeing that his tweet was misunderstood
— GroberttRMD (@GroberttRMD)
And others with, a more than visible, annoyance, due to the misogynistic charge of the first tweet.
The good intention of the campaign is overshadowed by a questionable execution
For its part, the franchise account sought to give an explanation in the following tweet, where they respond to a user about their creative process for this campaign on Twitter. While the company reaffirms its focus on raising awareness of female representation in the culinary profession, this not enough to turn around the controversy created.
Controversy that even generated responses from rival brands, as given by KFC Gaming, alluding that Burger King should delete the tweet. Whose response from the Community of the hamburger franchise was that “They are drawing attention to the lack of female representation» in the culinary industry.
Precisely from this point, the campaign received support from some users, justifying the tweet by the virality achieved.
The Burger King campaign is well played, they have everyone talking about it and that is the purpose of the campaign.
— Wall Street Wolverine (@wallstwolverine)
Although it is true that with this extreme strategy They have generated great interaction on the networks about the campaign carried out, not all this attention has been focused on that. As stated in the following tweet, since most of the interactions are taking place in that first and easy to misunderstand sentence, without getting to the bottom of the Burger King campaign. In that sense, the tweet has been devastating for the alleged primary objective of the campaign, to explain the HER initiative
This tweet has 22,000 retweets.
Your reply tweet has 1,000 retweets.
This is why using sexist remarks as bait is a dumb, dumb idea. The majority of people aren’t seeing your positive reply. They’re just seeing a sexist comment made by a brand account.
— Ryan Brown ➡️ Gamescom (@Toadsanime)
Taking these points of view into account, the campaign did generate the expected response, but it would be necessary to see the cost that it will present for the company. It may be easily forgotten, as is often the case on social networks, but the tweet will remain on the platform as long as it is not removed. And with this permanence will remain the possibility that someone will see it again, and misunderstand it.
Social networks have become a very effective tool for advertising and connecting with the public. However, in cases like this they end up becoming a double-edged sword.
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