The Semiotics Of Burger King And McDonald’s
Burger King is a subsidiary brand of Restaurant Brands International and the leading brand in RBI’s revenue-based portfolio. In 2018, BK accounted for just over 67% of the total RBI revenue. Burger King was founded in 1954. It is the second largest hamburger nourishment brand in the world by number of operating restaurants worldwide. Burger King Restaurants operate in over 100 countries and territories in the United States. In recent years, Burger King has experienced steady revenue growth.
This is a Burger King advertisement. It features a woman with heavy makeup that opens her mouth. What awaits her in front is an elongated hamburger. The title itself written: ‘It will leave you speechless’ and the font size of ‘It will detonate’ is larger which attracts the attention of the audience. At the bottom of the advertisement, they present the entire hamburger and written: ‘Super seven inches’ to emphasize the length of the hamburger. These elements had created a semiotic message in a sexual way. The posture of the model with the hamburger that seems to enter the mouth looks like a blowjob posture. Obviously, this advertisement is aimed at males. The way they emphasized the length of the hamburger seems to speak about the length of the male private part, in addition to the slogan: ‘Just taste better’, it creates a message that if the hamburger (private part of the male) is longer, simply it tastes better and will leave you speechless.
This publicity has apparently gained much attention from the company. The advertising model came out and showed his anger at the advertising company by using his photo as something sexual. She felt she was humiliated. Although the company purchased the right to use the image, but the model believed that Burger King had raped her face and they should have informed her that the image will be used for this type of purpose. On the other hand, Burger King has commented on nothing more than simple respect for consumers. Obviously, they don’t think it’s their fault.
McDonald’s may be a well-known fast-food chain guilty of various controversial discussions. From selling highly unhealthy food to the creation of misleading advertising campaigns that compromise the health of many people world-wide that have one common point between them. Those campaigns works and other people continuously buy McDonald’s products. I’m going to explain how this is often possible through a Semiotics.
Denotations: The literal message that the creator wants us to perceive, during this case a living fish swimming during a hamburger-shaped fishbowl. These are the denotation factors we instantly perceive the primary time we glance at the poster: The fresh living fish, the text quoting “Fillet-O-Fish”, the hamburger-shaped fishbowl, the small oxygen bubbles inside It, the clear and transparent background and therefore the McDonald’s red and yellow logo and motto: “I’m lovin’ It®”
Connotations: The implied messages that the creator wants us to perceive so as to successfully influence us to shop for McDonald’s product. The transparent background and therefore the shiny fishbowl gives us the thought of “clean” and “transparency” and both of those emotions are the essential fundamentals during this poster. The creator wants to influence us with the thought that McDonald’s isn’t a “dirty” and “sneaky” place that sells highly unhealthy food but instead may be a clean and transparent Industry that desires to sell just the “best” for his or her customers. Another important implied message is that the living fish inside the hamburger-shaped bowl, McDonald’s is trying to sell us the thought that their “Fillet-o-Fish” is so good because made ONLY with fresh ingredients. The last but not last important implied message inside the poster is the “Quotes” inside It: “Fillet-O-Fish” and therefore the McDonald’s logo “I’m lovin’ It ”. Those two factors are literally really important, especially their successful company logo and therefore the at the top of both texts. The “Copyright” symbol at the top gives us the thought of “Unique”, something that only McDonald’s owns, during this case, the freshest Fillet-o-Fish within the world. However these aren’t the sole important factors. The colours inside the McDonald’s logo are a deep psychology research on human behaviour. Scientist hasn’t completed the researches on how determinate colours can influence the human minds so as to form them hungry, but many factors are surely correlated.
It is important that a good brand can communicate its identity through those points; processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.
From the analysis of these two brands I realized how important semiotics is for human psychology so that your brand can be profitable under a business side of things, the study of signs should be used more in everyday life, it would teach you how to manage emotions and to be more elastic in terms of mentality.
In conclusion, semiotics is often a strong tool if you want to influence people within the right way and for the great of people. Sadly, though many researches have shown how disruptive fast food is, people still buy and consume their products daily. This shows how easily our minds are often manipulated by those immense industries that everyday attempt to sell their products to us through studied and effective campaigns that don’t really show how a product is really made, but just a little a part of lies.