Ad agency responsible for ‘straight hell’ Burger King Pride Whopper apologises

Burger King Austria's Pride Whopper with the words "time to be proud"

An ad agency has apologised after Burger King Austria’s confusing “Pride Whopper” revealed a fundamental misunderstanding about how gay sex works.

On the first day of Pride Month, Burger King Austria revealed its Pride Whopper – literally just a regular Whopper, but served with either two sesame “top” buns, or two flat “bottom” buns. And no, it wasn’t a joke.

According to Burger King Austria’s Instagram post, the top and bottom burgers were “equal buns” intended to “highlight equal rights and equal love”.

The misguided ad campaign left some social media users “puking and laughing” at the same time, while others asked: “What in straight hell?”

One Twitter user wrote: “Instead of focus grouping stuff to death, just hire one gay person to tell you this is a bad idea.”

“Burger King Austria made a burger to celebrate Pride Month that’s either two tops or two bottoms,” said another.

“But, much like being in a gay relationship, it is really helpful to have one top and one bottom.”

Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour tweeted: “One: This is real. Two: I’m not sure they know how gay sex works. Three: I can’t believe Burger King missed the opportunity to do double meat for Pride.”

Now, the ad agency responsible for the cursed campaign, the Austrian branch of German agency Jung von Matt, has admitted that it “messed up”.

The company wrote on LinkedIn: “We’ve heard your voices and listened carefully… We are proud of our queer community within our agency. Unfortunately, we still messed up and didn’t check well enough with community members on different interpretations of the Pride Whopper. That’s on us.

“The intended message of the Pride Whopper was to spread equal love and equal rights. Our strongest concern is if we offended members of the LGBTQ Community with this campaign. If this is the case, we truly apologise.

“We’ve learned our lessons and will include experts on communicating with the LGBTQ community for future work as promoting equal love and equal rights will still be a priority for us.”

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