Burger King advertisers apologise over’Pride Whopper’ with two top or bottom buns

Burger King in Austria has apologised after facing criticism for its ‘Pride Whopper’.

The ‘Pride Whopper’ had been created to mark the LGBT celebrations going on around the world this month, but received mass criticism from people saying that it “totally missed the mark”.

The campaign called on customers to pick a burger with two tops or two bottoms, or “two equal buns” as the fast food chain put it.

Sharing a post on LinkedIn following the widespread criticism, Austrian branch of advertising agency Jung von Matt Donau confessed that they “messed up”.

Burger King’s Pride campaign was met with criticism (Credit: Burger King Austria)

“We’ve heard your voices and listened carefully…,” they said in response to the backlash. “We at JvM Donau are proud of our queer community within our agency.

“Unfortunately, we still messed up and didn’t check well enough with community members on different interpretations of the Pride Whopper. That’s on us.”

They added: “The intended message of the Pride Whopper was to spread equal love and equal rights. Our strongest concern is if we offended members of the LGBTQ Community with this campaign. If this is the case, we truly apologise.

“We’ve learned our lessons and will include experts on communicating with the LGBTQ community for future work as promoting equal love and equal rights will still be a priority for us.”

Burger King’s ad agency has since apologised (Credit: Alamy)

As you can imagine, the response to the campaign was one of outrage, with people calling it “stale”, “strange” and downright offensive.

“What a strange advertisement. I’ll take my Whopper with a regular bun because ordering fast food doesn’t need to be a political statement for me,” said one.

Whilst another wrote: “Let’s sexualize literally everything so everyone feels included”.

“Burger King could have taken advantage of pride month to give us Pretty Pattie’s but they decided to stoop to stale sex jokes instead,” penned a third. 

Twisted has reached out to Burger King for comment at the time.

Burger King could have taken advantage of pride month to give us Pretty Pattie’s but they decided to stoop to stale sex jokes instead pic.twitter.com/mKnBlvzRsx

— Kenny ( The Superman Enjoyer ) (@SpiderKen1995) June 6, 2022

This isn’t the first time the fast-food giant has come under fire for a Pride campaign.

June is officially Pride month, where the world celebrates gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans culture, activism and history.