As I mentioned yesterday, I’m in London all week speaking at SES on really important stuff like “Meaningful SEO Metrics” and “Digital Asset Optimization”.  I plan on mentioning this all damn week, not because the topics that I’m speaking on are all that earth-shattering, but because it’s nutty that someone thought it was a good idea to fly out the guy who cusses like a drunken sailor on his blog about advertising to speak to a large crowd of people who paid to get in the room. Solid!

Anyway, you’ll be thrilled to know that, despite what many agencies and other folks that work in advertising like to say, the ads in the UK can suck just as much as those in the US.  I’m staying in Islington for the conference and there’s a great bit of raucous over the fact that they just built a new Burger King in this part of town, but frankly I think it’s because Burger King is running crap ads like this one:

The ad almost saves itself by being a little funny at the end with his buddy giving him crap for falling in the way he did and then asking him what he was listening to on his spy headphones, but it’s just not enough.

They introduce the spy thing right out of the shoot, which is a little overdone, and good thing they got to the fact that he was dropping into a Burger King early because otherwise, Brits would just be asking what the hell was going on with this ad.

However, for some reason they wait all they way until the spot is about to fade out before they say, “just 2.49, you’ll feel like you robbed us!” Really? That was the punchline after all that spy shit?

I know BK ads in the states are weird because, well, they have to do something to stand out from McDonald’s and just showing the food isn’t going to cut it against that monster.  McDonald’s advertises so much that if they ever pulled their business from an agency, it would be like a mill closing down in the mid-west. You would see creatives and media buyers selling smack or their bodies just to get someone to charge up their iPhones.  You know you’ve hit rock bottom in your career when you over to suck someone off just so you can check in on Foresquare.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, BK ads in the States are weird for a reason, but in the UK, I think it’s safe to just go back to showing that your burgers aren’t little, over fried pieces of crap like over at the Clown’s place.

I’m not going to bother going to BK over here unless they really go local and offer to deep fry me a whopper like they do at the chip and kabob places in Scotland…

J.

Related posts you might enjoy:

1. Mr. T tells the UK to get some nuts (live from #SES London)
2. Pizza Hut UK reminds me that things are just different here (Live from #SES London)
3. FloTV commercials, all about the child abuse
4. “I’ve never voted Tory before” ads in UK are ripe for abuse, fun (leftover from #SES London)
5. Time Warner Cable, bad service, bad commercials