Burger King And Coca Cola Both Caught Badvertising In The UK

It hasn’t been a good week on the other side of the pond for Burger King or Coca Cola. The fast food company got a kick in the rear for misleading customers about the size of its chicken sandwich, while the cola giant is left having to tell little kids not to Google “2 girls 1 cup” after a failed Facebook campaign.

First off, there’s BK, who had to pull a TV ad for its Tendercrisp chicken sandwich because viewers complained the clip misled them into expecting a sandwich that was significantly larger than what they ended up with.

Not happy to merely go on anecdotal evidence, the Advertising Standards Authority went out and sampled the sandwich, only to find that the thickness and the overall height was “considerably less” than in the ad.

But they weren’t done yet:

We also examined the size of the burgers in the hands of an average-sized man and considered that they did not fill the hands to the same extent as the burger featured in the advert.

We concluded that the visuals in the advert were likely to mislead viewers as to the size and composition of the product.

Meanwhile, the folks at Coca Cola have some explaining to do after a Facebook promotion to push Dr. Pepper (which Coke distributes in the UK) ended up pointing people in the direction of one of the internet’s most infamous — and disgusting — videos.

The Facebook campaign used the accounts of users who signed up to post supposedly humorous status updates about the beverage. Alas, one of those messages was “I watched 2 Girls 1 Cup and felt hungry afterwards.”

If you don’t know what that is, then you’re all the better for it. Please, do not Google it.

Coca Cola has pulled the campaign and apologized to those who were offended.

Burger King advert ‘misled on size’ [BBC]

Coca-Cola apologizes for Dr. Pepper’s “2 Girls 1 Cup” Facebook snafu [Westword.com]

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