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Helena Hendra and Madi Booker appear in an advertisement for the Burger King Rebel Whopper plant-based meat burger. An advertisement for the burger was found to be misleading.
A Burger King ad for its plant-based burger, which already had a bull smell, was ordered to go off the air after a watchdog found it to be misleading.
It is not the first time that the hamburger ad campaign has been under the spotlight, after giving the impression that a small town in Rangitīkei had a Burger King restaurant when it was actually transporting residents more than 100 kilometers away to sample the Burger.
The Burger King’s Rebel Whopper burger uses a plant-based patty instead of beef, and was released with an ad that shows people trying the burger without being told it wasn’t animal-based meat.
The campaign had already caused problems when the authority denounced it.
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The TV commercial featured people in Bulls talking about how they love beef, before trying the Rebel Whopper and being amazed that it was plant-based.
But Bulls does not have a Burger King, it is very suitable for meat puns. Participants were bused to the Upper Hutt restaurant for promotion.
The person filing the complaint said the final voiceover on the radio version – “Burger King’s New Rebel Whopper – 100 percent Whopper, 0 percent meat” – was misleading.
The plant-based hamburger could not be 0 percent beef since it was cooked on the same surface as the beef, so it would absorb the fat and juice from non-vegetable patties.
Burger King told the authority that the Rebel Whopper was launched as an “alternative for flexitarians,” and comments from vegetarians on social media showed they understood that it was cooked the same way as a meat pie.
The fact that meat and vegetable patties were cooked on the same surface was also disclosed at the point of purchase.
But the Advertising Standards Authority found against Burger King, with the majority of the board of authority judging that the 0% beef line was misleading.
The line created an expectation that there was a separate cooking process, and the ad had to be alone without the information in the store or online.
