Clowns from Hell: How Burger King Trolled McDonald's in its Creative Advertising

Everyone knows the long—standing confrontation between two fast food giants - Burger King and McDonald's. The war of companies began in 1981, when Burger King in its advertising began to compare its Whopper and Big Mac, criticizing the latter for a small amount of meat. After that, there were many attacks, scandals, insults and lawsuits, the end of which is not visible to this day.

The main weapon in the battle of two fast food titans is advertising. At the same time, Burger King, which has been practicing an aggressive style of promoting its products on the market since its foundation, acts as unscrupulously as possible.

Snarls, however, with more subtle trolling, and McDonald's. The world's largest restaurant chain periodically hints Burger King in its place, including with the help of such pointers:

Giant battles take place all over the world, on billboards, banners and leaflets. Russia did not escape this fate either:

And here is an outrageous case noticed in one of the Moscow Burger King restaurants:

Indeed, if the Poppy occupies as much as 18.6% of the global fast food market, then the Kings get a much more modest 4.6%. Of course, it is much easier to find a restaurant with a clown Ronald McDonald at the entrance in any country of the world. By the way, the clown, which is a symbol of the world's most extensive catering network, has become one of the latest targets for Burger King's attacks on a competitor.

The persecution of clowns emanating from Burger King is played out even in the final frames of the horror film "It", where the hero sees a restaurant chain, after which the inscription appears "The moral is: never trust a clown ... Burger King".

In 2017, in order to once again tease the enemy, the Kings staged a Halloween action, offering everyone who comes in a clown costume a free whopper.

But that's not all. The Kings ordered a series of posters with clowns holding children from the Spanish design agency LOLA MullenLowe, which develops visual advertising. The captions under the posters read: "Birthdays should be happy." It would seem that McDonald's has nothing to do with it, but the fact is that the clown, in combination with fast food, is strongly associated with restaurants offering Big macs for most fast food lovers.

It is also worth paying attention to the clowns themselves, when looking at which everything immediately becomes clear. In American culture, these characters are very ambiguous and often symbolize not laughter and joy, but childhood phobias and death.

Nothing is sacred to people when it comes to competition in business. What do you think?