On Tuesday, Oct. 17, Burger King posted an anti-bullying PSA on their YouTube channel. Which is a definitely a new angle from a burger chain that most of us forgot about.
But no matter what your opinion on Burger King may be, one must admit that this video got its message across, and in a skillfully authentic way. An excerpt of the PSA went viral on Twitter.
Burger King just released one of the best anti-bullying PSAs I've ever seen pic.twitter.com/0RV1JUvBd2
— Josh Goodman (@JustJOSH_ingYa) October 19, 2017
The video documents a social experiment that took place at one of Burger King’s 15,000 locations. Child actors were positioned in the center of the restaurant to put on a convincing display of bullying. While one of the children was clearly not enjoying his experience as the others pushed him out of his chair, degraded him verbally, and at one point spilled a drink on his meal, the PSA shows most customers simply watching silently with wide eyes.
Burger King then takes their experiment in a new direction. An employee is shown in the back, punching Whopper Jr. meals and making messes out of the burgers, then wrapping them up to be served to the same customers surrounding the bullying scene. As the paper packaging is unwrapped by the customers, many of them complain to the front desk immediately. They inquire if there is a manager they can speak to, if there is something wrong with the employee, etc.
The employee at the front desk begins to ask the odd question “Did you order it bullied or unbullied?” and customers proceed to become more irritated. The statistics begin to show on the screen that 95% of the customers reported a bad Whopper Jr. meal, but only 12% of customers did anything to stop the child in the center of the restaurant being bullied.
We live in a world where BURGER KING addresses bullying with more tact than the President of the United States
— kate bush's husband (@airbagged) October 20, 2017
Closing with the message “No Jr. deserves to be bullied.” the PSA left many speechless and racked up hundreds of thousands of views via Twitter and Youtube. Users that have commented on the video call it an “excellent life lesson” with “eye-opening statistics.”
Watch the full version below.
