I just saw the craziest commercial the other night! It featured the Burger King mascot breaking into McDonald’s headquarters and stealing the blueprint for a sausage, egg, and cheese muffin. The tagline stated, “It’s not that original, just sausage, egg, and cheese, but it tastes good and it’s only $1.” The end of the commercial shows the Burger King mascot racing through the security gate on a motorcycle, leaving the security guards bewildered.

I have seen Apple vs. Microsoft and Verizon vs. AT&T, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen food companies directly challenging each other in their advertising. It’s also odd that they aren’t trying to say they are better than McDonald’s, they’re actually trying to say they’re the SAME as McDonald’s. Very interesting in my opinion. I wonder if it’s just gotten to the point that the fast food companies are playing a price game after failing at other tactics. McDonald’s tried to go healthy and go premium, while Burger King has always offered “have it your way” and premium burgers, but now it comes down to saying, “we’re selling the same thing, at the same price… the end.” I haven’t looked into BK’s Marketing recently, but it seems odd that they used this tactic in their advertising. I’ll have to keep my eyes open to see if I can figure out where they’re going with it. But, if nothing else, it caught my attention and kept me talking, so they must be doing something right!

I’m in a word mood I guess, because this post also deals with word choice in advertising. While walking to the elevators at Adobe corporate, I noticed a 3-section bin with the following labels, “Compost”, “Recycle”, and “Landfill”. Most bins in the Bay area have a place for trash and recycling, and some also include compost. But, so far, Adobe is the only one I’ve seen with the label “Landfill” instead of “Trash”.

For some reason, I find this to be a little humorous. I understand that we all need to do our part to be green, and recycle or compost when we can. They take it a step further by reminding us where our trash ultimately ends up, and it just strikes me as funny. The makers of this bin must be using this word choice as a small guilt trip to those depositing waste in the trash bin, in the hopes of making them remember that they are contributing to a growing problem. I wonder if using the label “landfull” actually makes people stop and think, change their behavior, or chuckle a little. Then again, maybe no one notices… would you?