Burger King wanted to promote their new scholarship for women to become chefs. They thought that International Women’s Day would be an appropriate time to talk about it. So they tweeted about it.
The tweet?
“Women belong in the kitchen.”
They could have used a good editor to go over the message before releasing it to the world.
Aren’t bare feet a violation of most health codes? And who’s going to make sure they’re all pregnant?
JERRY HUBBARD: It’s perfectly clear to me! 
Uh, is there a form to fill out? Can I borrow your pen?
I’d guess that they were probably going for the effect of this, which I think I’ve seen on a tshirt:
Women Belong In The House
And In The Senate
However, if that’s the effect they were aiming for, they missed pretty badly. It doesn’t work if you leave the second line off!
– admittedly, it’s not entirely clear how to word the second line here. ‘Getting Paid What They’re Worth as Master Chefs’ is kind of a mouthful.
Unintended double meaning, are you serious?
The whole point of the line was the intended double meaning, to draw people’s attention with something that looks like an offensive sexist comment.
The criticism of Burger King is simply that it was poorly judged, the intended “joke” just doesn’t seem to work very well, it takes some effort to work out what they are actually promoting and be sure that it was not just an offensive sexist comment. Their marketing people should have tested it on people to gauge their reactions, rather than just trying to be clever and edgy.
Indeed. Totally aside from the fact that the joke is only a vague chuckle at best, the fact that the joke is only potentially funny if spread across two tweets, as it was (as that was the only way to get the ‘beat’ for the outraged reaction), should have tipped their social media person off to the fact that Twitter is just not the right format for the joke - it’s too easy for the setup and punchline to get separated. Someone who actually follows BK might have them separated by a bunch of other tweets on their timeline, and someone who doesn’t is very likely to only see the first one in isolation, so they’ll get the outrage, but not the ‘haha, we really meant as chefs’ release.
Poe’s law strikes again.
How about “Women belong in the (commercial) kitchen”?
Reminds me of the McDonald’s ad campaign maybe about 10 years ago, where some ad writer unfortunately did not understand what the phrase “I’d hit that” meant, and applied it in combination with pictures of people looking longingly at Big Macs and Quarter Pounders.
Maybe if they had added one little word - ‘also’
I thought this was going to be about the commercial for some new sandwich of theirs where they say “I’ve gotta get my hands on the king’s buns”.
Agreed. The whole campaign relies on people understanding the double meaning.
I don’t think that really works, either. There are a lot of people in a commercial kitchen, and many of them are doing jobs that are poorly paid and disrespected.
Maybe they need to work on that one too.
Modnote: In a thread about inappropriately sexist remarks you seem to be making an inappropriately sexist one-liner attempt at humor. Please think before you post next time or if you did think, please refrain.
This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record.
I’d argue that a better way to say it would be that it’s an unintended single meaning. Without context, the statement is just an offensive sexist comment. And everyone should know that Tweets can and will be shared without that context–it’s how the platform works.
The way to do this properly without trying to cash-in on sexism is to put it all in one Tweet. There is more than enough space. Tweet this, for example:
A woman’s place is actually in the kitchen
…or anywhere else she wants to work. `https://burger.king/women-cook
That said, I would very much suspect this was entirely intentional. They get to have a controversial reaction, which gets them views and people thinking about the brand, while making sure that pretty much all reporting on it will mention that it was a mistake and that they do actually support women.
I mean, I’m hungry now, and I found myself mindlessly craving some BK. If I weren’t suspicious of their motives, I might actually have gone and gotten some food there.
It would be like how these “feuds” are used by artists to get their name in then news.
I’m mystified that anyone could possibly imagine that it wasn’t intentional.
This campaign was brought to you by the marketers of Dr. Pepper 10.