Burger King New Zealand Uses ‘Hilarious’ Huge Chopsticks to Sell New ‘Vietnamese’ Burger
By Ryan General
Burger King New Zealand has earned the ire of many Asian netizens for an ad that many have found to be racially insensitive.
The ad, posted by Burger King’s New Zealand Instagram account, @burgerkingnz featured several people struggling to eat a burger using oversized chopsticks.
The video was apparently created by the local franchise to promote its new Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp burger.
Korean New Zealander Maria Mo tweeted a clip of the ad after seeing it as a sponsored video on Instagram.
In an interview with Huffington Post, Mo explained that she felt the need to share the clip “because I couldn’t believe such blatantly ignorant ads are still happening in 2019. It honestly took me a second to work out what the heck I was looking at.”
“I was watching it thinking there must be some kind of layered twist ― only to realize, no, there was no twist, it really was that base level,” she added.
Mo’s video has since gone viral, racking up over two million views as of this writing. It has generated angry responses from netizens who were equally upset over the ad’s blatant mocking of the use of chopsticks.
According to Mo, she was “fed up” with seeing Asians portrayed by popular brands in an insulting manner.
“I felt extremely fed up, and tired,” Mo was quoted as saying. She added that people of color “are constantly having to deal with microaggressions as well as outright hatred and it just never ends. And I could not believe that such a concept was approved for such a big, well-known company. It says a lot [about] what kind of demographics they must employ across the board for their ads.”
Featured image via Instagram/burgerkingnz
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