Banning Burger King’s ‘Misleading’ Burger Adverts Is No Excuse for Bad Whopper Jokes

Burger King’s Rebel Whopper has to follow the rules like everyone else

Burger King’s daring foray into advertising burgers using category error is over, after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the brand’s ads for the “plant-based” Rebel Whopper. The ASA said that social media posts — which accurately referred to the burger as plant-based — could have misled vegans into believing it was suitable for them: “The green colour palette and the timing of the ad and product release to coincide with ‘Veganuary’ contributed further to the impression that the product was suitable for vegans and vegetarians.”

Its sins are twofold: it is cooked on the same grill as beef burgers, and is served with mayonnaise, which contains egg, as standard. The apparent uncanniness of such a burger’s pitch is easily explained — it’s aimed at meat-eaters who just want to eat less meat — but its nuance is self-evidently difficult to elucidate in a brief advert, and no-one ever made a film called Rebel Without an Easily Defined, Bitesize, Philosophically Uncomplicated Cause Suitable for Contemporary Digital Media Attention Spans. [BBC]

And in other news...

• A survey from food bank charity FareShare suggests that at least 1.5 million Britons are newly going hungry on a daily basis as a result of the novel coronavirus outbreak. [Guardian]
• A broad-strokes look at novel coronavirus’ impact on global food supply. [BBC]
• Milk Float Revival Tour: not a band, but a consequence of the pandemic. [Guardian]
• Good tweet: