Burger King has launched yet another viral marketing website to promote their introduction Monday of their Chicken Fries. The site, www.coqroq.com, promotes a ficticious heavy metal band called Coq Roq (get it?!). Music video-style ads for the band will air on network and cable TV, including SpikeTV, MTV and VH1.UPDATE: Slipknot's Burger King Beef: Metal band threatens lawsuit over chain's chicken fries campaign @ thesmokinggun.com
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I am a heavy metal fan from Northeast Ohio and I find that since about 2001 junk food marketers have begun to target their efforts towards heavy metal and hard rock fans. It started (seemingly) innocently enough with the Pepsi and Lifesavers ad campaigns featuring everyone's favorite kostumed kreeps KISS, and has gone as far as fast food advertisements three times or more in the span of a commercial break during programming popular with hard rock/heavy metal fans such as "Metalocalypse", "Headbangers Ball", "Metal Mania", "Classic In Concert", Behind The Music"'s heavy metal/hard rock-focused episodes, "Family Guy", "This Is Spinal Tap" showings on the VH1 channels, and many more.
Is this because heavy metal fans are usually on the go to concerts or hunting down the hottest new metal and are usually not at home to eat or is it the fact that junk food marketers believe that by marketing their products using celebrities (Puff Daddy, KISS, Shakira, etc.) catch phrases (such as "Have It Your Way", "The Best Pizzas Under One Roof", and I'm Lovin' It"), and cute or quirky mascots (anyone remember "The Noid" or "The Fry Guys"?) their products will then appeal to people they deem as being susceptible to marketing tactics or possessing low intelligence (children and teenagers, rap music fans, Hispanics, poor people, people with mental disabilities, punk rockers, hard rock fans, emos, movie buffs, sports fans, heavy metal fans, etc.)
Can people think for themselves and not buy into the hype? Of course, and many do.
But for the many who can resist the marketing efforts, many refuse to do so, for several reasons: 1: Some teens and children fear it will make them social outcasts if they carry a brown bag lunch containing something like a a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with a side of sliced oranges and celery sticks
with a bottle of water or juice to school for ;uch instead of fat-and-sodium laden Lunchables or a fatty peanut butter sandwich and Doritos? 2: Junk food does have more of a distinct flavor than natural foods, and many have grown accustomed to artificial flavoring and coloring in their foods and now cannot tolerate the taste of natural foods, due to their supposed "blandness". 3: Marketers are aggressive in their efforts to sell their products, sometimes using promises of popularity, energy, and hunger/thirst satiation in their advertisments when in reality the foods/beverages can make you thirstier/hungrier in some cases. 4: Celebrities and mascots used in food commercials and products often appeal to children, teenagers and young adults. (examples: Hannah Montana Rockin' Rolls, Cap'n Crunch, Puff Daddy Burger King commercials, KISS, Queen and Robert Plant soda commercials).
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