For the longest time, Burger King and
McDonald's have been close rivals. There is an old Burger king commercial
advertising video that took a jab at McDonald’s. The video which was released on September 1986
shows a kid standing on the base of the side-post eating a burger, then pushing
the signpost to display King’s burger. The display of the king’s burger on the
signpost is accompanied by the caption on the advertising video” this is how a
burger should be”. The jab aiming at McDonald’s is on the premise to show that
McDonald’s burger is not on the same level as King’s Burger.
The Burger King advertising video uses
name-calling propaganda. The main
purpose of this technique is to give a bad name to McDonald’s brand. This type
of propaganda is utilized by the propagandist as a tool for creating fear and
arousing discrimination by using negative statements to create hatred targeting
particular institutions or oven ideas (Dimitrov et al., 2021). Burger
King employed the Named-calling propaganda technique to show how unworthy their
close rival, McDonald’s is by creating a video that demeans their competitors’
products using negative words.
The technique is based on calling on a
conclusion which lacks the support of evidence.
Furthermore, the technique is employed as an alternative to arguing the
merits of a belief (Shabo, 2008).
In most cases, to create effective and hilarious propaganda, the propagandist,
there is widespread utilizes cartoons and comical writings. In the narrow
sense, the propagandist's primary aim is to create sarcasm and ridicule
messages to demean their targets. For example, in the Burger King commercial
advertising video, a kid is eating a Burger King while standing on the base of
a signpost written McDonald’s and then uses his back to push leading to
signpost wording changed to Burger King. The scene is sarcastic since it shows
that even the kids do not want to be associated with McDonald’s brand.
The name-calling technique employed
by Burger King to discredit their rival McDonald’s seems effective. The video is straight to the point. It uses
negative symbols and words to swayed people to reject McDonald’s burgers. In a
nutshell, many people after watching the video may be persuaded that the video
is right, and they may be uninterested to look for the available evidence. Bad
names have played a central role in the history of the world and its growth.
They have ruined reputations and resulted in major conflicts (Doorley et al., 2015). Therefore, name-calling propaganda on McDonald’s
has the effect of ruining its reputation as a brand citing that it deals with
products that are not up to the market standards.
In a nutshell, it is evident that companies
also employ propaganda to have a competitive edge in their respective
niche. Propagandist employs various
techniques to discredit their rivals while marketing their product. The short
commercial video of Burger King is a good example of a name-calling technique
that propagandists use to create prejudice.
References
Dimitrov, D., Ali, B. B., Shaar, S., Alam, F.,
Silvestri, F., Firooz, H., ... & Martino, G. D. S. (2021). Detecting
propaganda techniques in memes. arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.08013.
Doorley, J., & Garcia, H. F. (2015). Reputation
management: The key to successful public relations and corporate communication.
Routledge.
Shabo, M. (2008). Techniques of
propaganda and persuasion. Prestwick House Inc.
Appendices
Appendix A: Video link
https://youtu.be/zc0ip_-YLQ4
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