New Healthy Fruit Smoothie at Burger King Essay

If fast food is unhealthy and is believed to cause obesity, why is there still a fast food restaurant every few blocks? Perhaps because there are a lot of people who are still consuming fast food and backing its business, the fast food industry survives and appears to even increase. The fact that modern life is fast paced as well as the economy hasn’t fully recovered makes people prefer to work more consistent and eat faster. Needless to say, the competition among well-known brand names is getting more challenging, and advertising plays an important role in marketing and drawing consumers’ attentions. Knowing the only disadvantage of fast food is its unhealthiness, Burger King has recently introduced their healthy real fruit smoothie using David Beckham. By equating his charm, his famous credibility, and his physique, David Beckham endorses the new Burger King’s smoothie to not only women but also soccer fans and whoever seeks healthy choices at a fast food restaurant. Throughout the commercial, Burger King shows their true intentions: to visually attract the audience with their appealing and healthy smoothie, to interest them by using a celebrity along with the slogan â€Å"exciting things are happening at Burger King†, and to show part of the American culture through the story and the conversation. In the commercial, Burger King is attempting to refresh their reputation of being unhealthy and creates a visual appeal for their smoothie. By showing how the ripest strawberries are being cut and blend nicely, the commercial effectively forms a visual image of the drink and stimulates the audience’s curiosity to try it out. In addition, strawberry is definitely one of the most favorite flavors for kids while banana is a very healthy fruit. As a result, a mixing of those two fruits surely captures the attention of children and mothers who want to purchase a possibly healthier choice. As given on the Burger King’s website, the smoothie’s nutritional facts are acceptable, 200 calories and forty grams of sugar per twelve ounce serving (small size). Even though forty grams of sugar is a little bit too much for a 200 calorie drink, most of it comes from real fruits and plus, there isn’t any saturated fat or anything else. These definitely won’t kill you or make you fat compared to other sugary, creamy drinks. However, people often think that healthy food is boring and tasteless. By filming the ad expertly and convincingly with high definition, Burger King is able make the smoothie look realistically tasty and delicious. Its most visual appeal is when it was poured into the glass. The fluid looks amazingly delicious and well-blended. The color also appears to be reddish orange as it is well-balanced between strawberries and bananas. As Hirschberg mentioned in his â€Å"The Rhetoric of Advertising†, Burger King does create â€Å"the distinctive image for the product† in their commercial. The smoothie glass is shown closely on the half left of the image while other half is showing a bunch of fresh strawberries. They also blur the strawberries in the background to emphasize the prominence of the smoothie glass. This allows the audience to see its smooth viscosity closely and triggers their appetites as well as interests. Instead of illogically exploiting well-shaped models and athletes to promote unhealthy products like other franchises, Burger King utilizes David’s healthy and lean physique to indicate their product as a naturally healthy smoothie. Starting off with a spokesperson claiming â€Å"exciting things are happening at Burger King†, the setting of the commercial is refreshing, exciting, and appealing just like the smoothie itself. Surprisingly, the spokesperson’s tone isn’t too excited as expected. It is rather a normal, not-a-big-deal tone. It seems to imply that it is usual to have exciting things at Burger King, and in this case, it is David Beckham with the strawberry banana smoothie. Apparently, Burger King tries to persuade the audience that many celebrities do actually visit Burger King, and that they should come and eat at Burger King as well if they want to meet their idols. Using David Beckham to promote the smoothie is brilliant. Not only David Beckham is appealed to women, but also his classy fashion style is attracted the young adults, let alone his recognition as a professional soccer player. Additionally, like David, those kinds of frosty, sweet, and fruity smoothies have always been attracted to women rather than men. Furthermore, his healthy body makes the drink even healthier. Also, David has been recently promoting for the Sainsbury’s Active Kids as an ambassador. He has been on many posters and advertisements that encourage children to eat healthy and exercise. Burger King apparently knows what’s going on and has their commercial set. Through the conversation between David Beckham, the cashier, and the manager, the commercial creates an entertaining situation and shows part of the American culture. Humor is definitely one of the American cultures. Mostly everything we see on TV has entertaining and humorous elements. In the commercial, audience will be able entertained as soon as David orders his smoothie and mesmerizes the cashier. As the cashier is being fascinated by his charming radiance, David shifts into a luminous gentleman wearing a classy, black suit and reorders his smoothie in a very heavy English accent. The way David pronounces â€Å"strawberry banana smoothie† and the cashier’s daydreaming look are what make it worth a giggle. The music is also very antiquated. It sounds like one of those Western classic, love songs that appeared in â€Å"Gone with the Wind†. The commercial also exploits homosexual agenda by showing the male manager, after snapping his cashier out of David’s charm, is also stunned by David’s dazzle. Same sex attraction is just a daring joke as it either makes the audience impressed or offended. Nonetheless, whether it is offensive or not, the scene creates an emotional appeal and makes an impact on the audience as one of the advertising techniques Hirschberg has discussed, â€Å"They supply the unstated major premise that supplies a rationale to persuade an audience that a particular product will meet one or another of several different kinds of needs†. After all, the homosexual joke serves its purposes: to make impressions and to indirectly persuade that the strawberry banana smoothie is just irresistible for both sexes. It is not a surprise to see celebrities or well-known professional athletes appearing in a commercial nowadays. Using David Beckham to promote the new smoothie is a great move of Burger King. Burger King shows that fast food does not necessarily mean unhealthy. To get the word out about their changes, they have to pull out their biggest marketing campaign ever using a lot of well-known celebrities. So far, David Beckham as well as the new healthy smoothie menu is definitely the aces and the most success compared to other commercials. Its views jump over 20,000 in a matter of hours proving that it works. â€Å"With their latest initiatives, Burger King is showing commitment to areas that I’m passionate about, such as supporting charities, helping children and improving the healthier eating options. I am happy to help the brand launch its first smoothie platform, which is a great addition to any diet†, said David Beckham.