Burger King in Spain has copped a public backlash of biblical proportions, after a releasing an outdoor media campaign which used biblical quotes to promote its new plant-based burger during Holy Week.
Multiple Burger King ad posters were spotted at bus stops and other public settings in Seville, Spain last week, in the week leading up to Easter.
The ad shows the burger chain’s new “100% vegetarian. 100% flavour” menu item, with an accompanying caption that – according to Eurasia Review – translates to: “Take all of you and eat of it. Which doesn’t have meat”, echoing Jesus’ famous words to his disciples during the Last Supper.
WOW, no wonder #BoicotBurgerKing is trending. They straight blasphemed Jesus Christ while at the same time putting me on the veggie burgers are really human flesh and Soylent Green being set in 2022 coming to pass train. Let's put this in English #BoycottBurgerKing pic.twitter.com/kw2SDJetDd
— Steven Casper (@ColonelCasperUK) April 16, 2022
@BurgerKing the marketing campaign your group is doing in Spain and Portugal is shameful and miserable. #BoicotBurgerKing
— Olga Fernández 🇪🇸💚💚🇪🇸🇮🇱🇺🇸🇮🇹🇦🇷 (@Olga79102838) April 16, 2022
Waiting for a big apology from @BurgerKing HQ CMO for this offensive campaign from its Spain franchise. There is nothing funny about offending 2.8 billion people around the world. https://t.co/mMB53vjLaN
— Antonio (@antoniojag) April 17, 2022
It’s also reported another poster featured the caption “Flesh of my flesh”, with the latter “flesh” crossed out and replaced with “vegetable”.
Roughly 71.1 per cent of Spain’s population identifies as Catholic, so its no surprise Burger King’s latest Holy Week campaign went down about as well red meat on Fridays.
After images of the posters had spread on social media, #BoycottBurgerKing quickly went viral, with thousands of online Christians calling out the burger chain for disrespecting their religion during its most sacred week.
An online petition was also initiated on the CitizenGo platform, which demanded Burger King immediately remove the posters, apologise for their actions, and fire their top executive.
Burger King took to Twitter on Easter Sunday to apologise for its latest campaign.
“We apologize to all those who have felt offended by our campaign aimed at promoting our vegetable products during Holy Week,” the statement read.
“Our intention has never been to offend anyone and the immediate withdrawal of the campaign has already been requested.”
