Children's food campaigners complain about manly burger ad

The Children's Food Campaign, Sustain has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about Burger King‘s new TV advert for its XL Double Whopper.

Sustain argues that the ad's strapline "are you man enough?", questions the masculinity of boys who do not consume food excessively high in fat and saturated fat and suggests that excessive consumption is manly.

The campaign created by US agency Crispin Porter and Bogusky will run on terrestrial and satellite TV channel throughout November during programmes aimed at a male demographic.

However, Sustain argues that the ad is telling teenagers to be "manly" and eat the "unhealthy" burgers which will take nine miles to walk off.

The 60-second TV ad shows a man breaking into song (a male-orientated version of "I Am a Woman") leaving girlfriend open mouthed as his storms out of a restaurant, throwing away his carefully-sculpted meal with the line "I'm too hungry to settle for chick food."

The man is joined in the street by other singing males, who proceed to march down the street brandishing their XL Double Whopper burgers.

Richard Watts, co-ordinator of Sustain, said: "This kind of advert shows the food industry cannot be trusted to regulate itself. If the Government is serious about defusing the health time bomb of obesity, they need to end TV adverts for this kind of product before the 9pm watershed."

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By Melinda Varley

This article originally appeared on mad.co.uk, the website which delivers business insight to professionals in marketing, media, new media, advertising and design.To subscribe to mad.co.uk and receive full access to their database of articles on these industries, click here.

Source: mad.co.uk