I came across this article in Ad Week today. Burger King is pretending to change it’s name to Fries King…. and people are actually believing it for some reason.
The funny thing is that it’s been done before. I can remember back to one of my advertising classes around 2007 where we debated for about 10 minutes whether Pizza Hut’s claim to change their name to “Pasta Hut” was real or not. Of course, the fact that it was April 1st should have given us a clue! But the parallel thinking here seems to be that in order to introduce or place emphasis on a new product, it’s not enough anymore to say, “In addition to what we normally serve, we now serve X.” You have to do something a little more shocking to get people’s attention.
It’s kind of a strange promotion gimmick but hey, if it gets people talking, it’s working right?
Here is a TV spot Pizza/Pasta Hut put together back in the day to really drive the point home.