Burger King launched the ‘BK wants to buy your vote’ campaign this week, which aims to reduce abstentions in next Sunday’s elections
They say that ‘religion, football and politics’ cannot be discussed. In times of polarization, then, we don’t even talk about it. The topic, already avoided for a long time at family Sunday lunches, has been extended to other areas. In many WhatsApp groups, for example, talking about politics is prohibited in ‘internal statutes’, the irrefutable reason for expulsion, without any type of injunction.
If politics is, for some, a thorny topic to be avoided, others focus on the subject, often using humor or encouraging citizenship. Yes, I’m talking about brands and their relationships with politics.
For a few years now, Burger King has navigated these waters with mastery, far from controversy, and with the good humor that has always marked its campaigns. Not long ago, the fast food chain released a film that mocked the format of electoral programs, with fictitious candidates.
This week, the last before the municipal elections next Sunday (6), BK spoke about the subject again, this time, however, with a great touch of citizenship. The ‘BK wants to buy your vote’ campaign has a simple objective: to reduce the number of abstentions.
To encourage participation in the election, anyone who presents proof of voting at the BK restaurant counter on Monday (7) will be able to choose between receiving a medium fries or medium onion rings.
But, after all, is talking about politics a risk?
Marcos Bedendo, marketing professor at ESPM and co-author of the book ‘H2H Marketing: A Jornada para o Marketing Human to Human’, said that he does not see any risks — as long as the brand does not take a position, he highlighted several times.
“It’s one thing to communicate, it’s another to declare support for someone, which doesn’t fit, since brands don’t vote,” said Bedendo. “[A marca] It may even be more progressive or more conservative, however, taking a political stance is not a correct strategy”, he added.
Bedendo uses BK itself as an example of a brand that is always participating in everyday conversations, whose tone is provocative. “Burger King works within the context without having a partisan position. He does not vote for one or the other. He simply uses the context of the election to communicate in a more provocative way,” he said.
David’s ECD, Rogério Chaves agrees that brands shouldn’t even talk about politics or elections. “They must talk about their own universes,” he said. “But politics is a rich enough territory that brands can talk about their own universes using elections as an excuse.”
The challenge, according to David’s creative, is to find coherence with the brand’s discourse. As he highlighted, it is necessary to seek, within the topic of politics, the right tone that makes sense with what the brand already communicates.
In 2018, for example, Burger King talked about blank or invalid votes in the ‘Whopper in White’ campaign. To talk about the importance of participating in choosing representatives, the chain wrapped a sandwich in packaging that carried the following message:
“This is the Whopper in White, a sandwich with ingredients chosen by someone else. And when someone chooses in your place, you can’t complain about the result.”
Other examples
It is not new that politics and elections are topics covered in advertising, and Bombril says so.
Carlos Moreno, the brand’s poster boy for many years, gave life to several presidential candidates, at a time when political polarization was not as great as it is today.
In 2018, Nextel was inspired by the electoral debates in an action. The film, starring João Côrtes, highlighted Nextel’s main differentiators from the point of view of customer satisfaction.
