The Burger Wars are hotting up – or, you might say, erupting. Burger King is known to poke fun at McDonald's regularly through its advertising, and this latest jibe is positively volcanic.
Did you know there's a volcanic island between Madagascar and Antarctica called the McDonald Island? Us neither, until Burger King Brazil drew our attention to them with its latest tongue-in-cheek campaign. As you might imagine, the brand is unhappy with the McDonald's name. It's suggested rename? Whopper Island, of course.
In a brilliantly realised faux nature documentary created by DM9 studio, Burger King exclaims that "a place with real fire cannot be called McDonald's". Apparently, Burger King gifted the keepers of the island some Whoppers, and thus the idea to change the name was born. Right.
Of course, the whole thing is in jest, and it's another example of Burger King creatively poking fun at its biggest rival (one can imagine the marketing department rubbing their hands together on discovering the existence of McDonald Island). As advertising stunts go, it's a good one – the mockumentary is suitably epic and realistic. Much like the mouldy Whopper ad and that AI-generated poster, the whole thing shows that Burger King is yet to run out of clever ideas when it comes to slagging off McDonald's.
But for all the budget and effects, doesn't it seem a little desperate? Rarely do we see the relationship go the other way – McDonald's rarely takes swipes at Burger King, and yet, whisper it, the former's ads are arguably better. With Burger King continually drawing our attention to McDonald's' supremacy, and the latter rising above the rivalry by refusing to acknowledge it in its own ads, the impression remains that Burger King is the underdog here. One can practically hear Ronald McDonald asking, in the words of Mariah Carey, "Why are you so obsessed with me?"
