In teaser adverts promoting its "Whopper Virgins" challenge, the fast food chain describes how it sought out farmers in rural Romania, Thai villagers and residents of Greenland's icy tundra to compare its signature burger with arch rival McDonalds'.... "What happens if you take Transylvanian farmers who have never eaten a burger and ask them to compare Whopper versus Big Mac in the world's purest taste test?" one of the adverts asks. "Will they prefer the Whopper? These are the Whopper Virgins.".... The "undeniable" results of the chain's "unbiased" global research - which involved "13 planes, two dog sleds and one helicopter" - will be unveiled in a documentary next week, according to whoppervirgins.com, the website promoting the campaign.... "If you want a real opinion about a burger, ask someone who doesn't even have a word for burger," states the site to a haunting theme of drums and pan pipes. "Watch the whopper virgins take their first bite."
This has to be one of the sillier advertising campaigns in recent memory, if for no other reason than it screams "exploitation". In theory, it's sort of cute. In reality, though, what else are you doing but introducing desperately poor people to food they're not used to consuming and setting them up for all sorts of health problems- atherosclerosis, obesity, and the list goes on?
The stunning insensitivity inherent in the ads is something that truly staggers the imagination. The fact that crushing poverty and hunger continues to exist in some of the areas spotlighted in these commercials is something that seems to not even register. No, it's all about selling hamburgers, and once they're done exploiting poor villagers in one corner of the globe, it's on to another hellhole in search of more unsuspected, unsophisticated "Whopper virgins".
Join us next time when we travel the world in search of "AK-47 virgins"....
