Burger King T-Shirt Instructions

By | Thursday, August 13, 2009 1 comment
There's some media traction on Burger King's recent sponsorship of Getafe, the football (or "soccer" if you're an egocentric American) team from Spain. Taking advantage of fans' traditional reaction to goals of pulling their shirts over their faces, Burger King has produced shirts in Getafe's team colors, featuring the visage of the King on the inside. Pulling the t-shirt over one's head in the manner typical of goal celebration reveals the King's face to everyone. While many are questioning whether or not this will be a successful marketing move (Getafe, after all, has been floating towards the bottom of the league for the past few years), it's the t-shirt's comic book style instructions that caught my attention...
Roughly translated, it reads...
  1. Remove the official Getafe C.F. t-shirt from your Burger King bag.
  2. Wear your t-shirt when you feel like a star.
  3. Shoot, and make a goal.
  4. Prepare to celebrate.
  5. Show everyone that you have the King inside.
In terms of functionality, the text really doesn't help the artwork much. Even though it's not very well drawn, I think the artwork is sufficiently clear that most anyone could figure out what you're supposed to do. How many of you could figure it out before I provided the translation? Goes to show that good illustration skills aren't necessarily required for good storytelling.

Also, I'm left to wonder if the text really is for the people getting the shirts, or was it written so that the marketing agency who created the instructions could charge Burger King more money because they "had" to get their copyrighters and editors to work on it?
Newer Post Older Post Home

1 comments:

Ah... you're missing the irony of Burger King's advertising...

The instructions are poorly illustrated because the public expects such illustrated instructions to be poorly illustrated. (Ever look at the emergency procedure comics on airlines?)

The text is required because instruction cards always require text to say the same thing as the picture describes.

The text reflects Burger King's advertising style. The Wikipedia article on Burger King advertising says "humorous statements, claims and product descriptions were placed on bags, product packaging and on in-store promotional materials, including a Burger King Bill of Rights that gave its customers the right to Have it Your Way."

As for good illustration skills... ignoring the fact that prose literature tells stories without ANY pictures... there's Matt Feazell's Cynicalman and Scott Adams' Dilbert for example.

This is sort of like a company sponsoring a baseball game, handing out some gift to fans. It would be cool if BK had Getafe fans cover their heads whenever Getafe scored a goal, creating a crowd of Burger Kings.