Burger King Tricks Google Assistant With Clever And Creepy Ad

It's not often that mentions of Burger King appear on websites dedicated to technology and gadgetry, but Burger King has forced its way in nonetheless. A new ad from Burger King is causing quite the stir and a lot of discussion today, which is pretty impressive considering it's only 15 seconds in length.

15 seconds, as the ad you see below points out, isn't enough time to accomplish much of anything. So, it's up to our friendly Burger King employee to get crafty when it comes to explaining the Whopper. How exactly does he do that? By leaning into the camera and saying "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" at the end of the commercial.

Assuming there are any Google Assistant-capable devices (like Google Home) in earshot, the intended result is to get them to read off the beginning of Wikipedia's article on the Whopper. This, to me, is equal parts clever and creepy – clever in that it's a neat little trick Burger King decided to try, creepy in that I'm not sure I want advertisers taking advantage of the fact that I have smart devices on and around me almost all the time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some folks on the internet haven't taken so kindly to Burger King's commercial, considering the ad invasive or annoying. Burger King seems to have the advantage of being the first company to try something like this – it isn't hard to imagine that subsequent attempts at controlling a smart device through advertising will be met with outright disdain.

Here's hoping that this is just a one-off thing and not the beginning of a trend. For now, though, watch the ad for yourself and then head down to the comments section to tell us what you think. Is this a clever approach to marketing or just an annoying one?