Burger King

2015brand memesemi-active

Burger King is the fast food chain whose corporate marketing turned it into a repeat internet meme in the mid-2010s. Its viral moments include the 2015 Halloween Whopper #GreenPoop hashtag, the 2017 Google Home ad that hijacked smart speakers, and a run of controversial tweets from national accounts.

advertising memesfast food memesbackfire memesbrand participation memeshashtag memes

Overview

Burger King is the Miami-Dade County hamburger chain best known online for a run of viral marketing stunts and PR gaffes between 2015 and 20216. Founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida, and renamed in 1959, the chain has been owned since 2010 by Brazilian firm 3G Capital6. Its status as a recurring meme comes from a black-bun Halloween burger that turned customers' stool green, a TV ad engineered to hijack Google Home devices, a Russian promotion offering money for pregnancies by World Cup players, and a UK Twitter thread on International Women's Day.

Unlike most memes born from user creativity, Burger King's are almost all self-inflicted, produced or triggered by the chain's own marketing teams. That approach made the brand a case study in trolling as viral marketing. Since 2014, Burger King's parent company has been Restaurant Brands International, a Canadian holding company formed through the chain's merger with Tim Hortons9.

How It Spread

The green-stool complaints exploded on Twitter, where users shared photographic evidence and tagged @BurgerKing demanding answers. The #GreenPoop hashtag was used almost 1,000 times between October 2 and October 6, 2015, and the phrase "green poop" was tweeted over 5,000 more times in the same window6. HuffPost documented the reaction, noting that green dyes are often used to make black food coloring and quoting customers saying it took roughly three days for the effect to fade3. Burger King itself never issued a press response about the side effect6.

On April 12, 2017, the chain released a 15-second TV ad designed to hijack smart speakers. A Burger King employee leaned into the camera and said "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" causing nearby Google Home devices and Android phones to read the Wikipedia entry for the Whopper aloud4. The stunt kicked off an edit war on Wikipedia, with vandals adding fake ingredients such as rats and toenail clippings to the Whopper article while other editors fought to lock it5. Google patched the ad's audio waveform on its servers within roughly two hours, blocking the specific recording while still answering the same question spoken in a viewer's own voice5.

Burger King's international marketing produced its own viral disasters. On June 19, 2018, Burger King Russia offered 3 million rubles (around $47,000) and a lifetime supply of Whoppers to any Russian woman who got pregnant by a World Cup player, claiming such children would "promote the Russian team's success for generations to come"7. The BBC placed the promotion inside a wider pattern of Russian coverage portraying local women as "vamps" pursuing foreign fans during the tournament8. Three years later, on March 8, 2021, Burger King UK's @BurgerKingUK account tweeted the standalone line "women belong in the kitchen" as bait for a follow-up thread promoting a culinary scholarship for female staff. The lead tweet drew more than 155,000 retweets and quote tweets in six hours while the context tweet reached only about 8,300 shares, and Burger King UK apologized and deleted the thread later the same day6.

How to Use This Meme

Burger King is not a template meme with a fixed image or catchphrase. Online references to Burger King as a meme typically point back to one of the specific viral incidents: pasting green stool photos with the #GreenPoop hashtag, quoting "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" as a trigger phrase, or referencing the deleted "women belong in the kitchen" tweet whenever a brand account posts something inflammatory. The recurring joke online is that Burger King's marketing team either intentionally trolls or trips over itself in public, and the format of a reference is usually just naming the incident by its hashtag or ad line.

Cultural Impact

The Google Home ad was one of the earliest known cases of a brand deliberately weaponizing smart-speaker voice triggers as a paid distribution channel, and Google's server-side patch of the ad's waveform pointed toward future battles between advertisers and voice-assistant platforms5. The chain's willingness to court hashtag disasters helped establish "brand as shitposter" as a viable social media style, with other fast food accounts openly copying the same trolling tone. Between the Whopper Wikipedia war, the green-poop threads, and the deleted apologies, Burger King's marketing generated years of free coverage out of moments most companies actively try to avoid.

Frequently Asked Questions

Burger King

2015brand memesemi-active

Burger King is the fast food chain whose corporate marketing turned it into a repeat internet meme in the mid-2010s. Its viral moments include the 2015 Halloween Whopper #GreenPoop hashtag, the 2017 Google Home ad that hijacked smart speakers, and a run of controversial tweets from national accounts.

advertising memes fast food memes backfire memes brand participation memes hashtag memes

Overview

Burger King is the Miami-Dade County hamburger chain best known online for a run of viral marketing stunts and PR gaffes between 2015 and 20216. Founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida, and renamed in 1959, the chain has been owned since 2010 by Brazilian firm 3G Capital6. Its status as a recurring meme comes from a black-bun Halloween burger that turned customers' stool green, a TV ad engineered to hijack Google Home devices, a Russian promotion offering money for pregnancies by World Cup players, and a UK Twitter thread on International Women's Day.

Unlike most memes born from user creativity, Burger King's are almost all self-inflicted, produced or triggered by the chain's own marketing teams. That approach made the brand a case study in trolling as viral marketing. Since 2014, Burger King's parent company has been Restaurant Brands International, a Canadian holding company formed through the chain's merger with Tim Hortons9.

How It Spread

The green-stool complaints exploded on Twitter, where users shared photographic evidence and tagged @BurgerKing demanding answers. The #GreenPoop hashtag was used almost 1,000 times between October 2 and October 6, 2015, and the phrase "green poop" was tweeted over 5,000 more times in the same window6. HuffPost documented the reaction, noting that green dyes are often used to make black food coloring and quoting customers saying it took roughly three days for the effect to fade3. Burger King itself never issued a press response about the side effect6.

On April 12, 2017, the chain released a 15-second TV ad designed to hijack smart speakers. A Burger King employee leaned into the camera and said "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" causing nearby Google Home devices and Android phones to read the Wikipedia entry for the Whopper aloud4. The stunt kicked off an edit war on Wikipedia, with vandals adding fake ingredients such as rats and toenail clippings to the Whopper article while other editors fought to lock it5. Google patched the ad's audio waveform on its servers within roughly two hours, blocking the specific recording while still answering the same question spoken in a viewer's own voice5.

Burger King's international marketing produced its own viral disasters. On June 19, 2018, Burger King Russia offered 3 million rubles (around $47,000) and a lifetime supply of Whoppers to any Russian woman who got pregnant by a World Cup player, claiming such children would "promote the Russian team's success for generations to come"7. The BBC placed the promotion inside a wider pattern of Russian coverage portraying local women as "vamps" pursuing foreign fans during the tournament8. Three years later, on March 8, 2021, Burger King UK's @BurgerKingUK account tweeted the standalone line "women belong in the kitchen" as bait for a follow-up thread promoting a culinary scholarship for female staff. The lead tweet drew more than 155,000 retweets and quote tweets in six hours while the context tweet reached only about 8,300 shares, and Burger King UK apologized and deleted the thread later the same day6.

How to Use This Meme

Burger King is not a template meme with a fixed image or catchphrase. Online references to Burger King as a meme typically point back to one of the specific viral incidents: pasting green stool photos with the #GreenPoop hashtag, quoting "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" as a trigger phrase, or referencing the deleted "women belong in the kitchen" tweet whenever a brand account posts something inflammatory. The recurring joke online is that Burger King's marketing team either intentionally trolls or trips over itself in public, and the format of a reference is usually just naming the incident by its hashtag or ad line.

Cultural Impact

The Google Home ad was one of the earliest known cases of a brand deliberately weaponizing smart-speaker voice triggers as a paid distribution channel, and Google's server-side patch of the ad's waveform pointed toward future battles between advertisers and voice-assistant platforms5. The chain's willingness to court hashtag disasters helped establish "brand as shitposter" as a viable social media style, with other fast food accounts openly copying the same trolling tone. Between the Whopper Wikipedia war, the green-poop threads, and the deleted apologies, Burger King's marketing generated years of free coverage out of moments most companies actively try to avoid.

Frequently Asked Questions