Burger King Tried Hijacking Google Home For Its Ads But Was Nicely Fooled By Internet Trolls
Life is beginning to imitate sci-fi literature and we should all be very worried.
In case it wasn¡¯t already clear that we¡¯re living in an Orwellian nightmare come to life, Burger King just tried to force consumers to watch their ads by hijacking their home devices. And hoo boy did that backfire and how.
The burger chain¡¯s master plan was based off an incident earlier this year, when an ad for Google Home accidentally set off viewers¡¯ Google Home devices nearby. The IoT (Internet of Things) hub has a pretty sensitive voice activation feature, designed to ¡°hear¡± commands from even the next room. So, of course, Burger King thought it would be just the best idea to do the same thing intentionally to advertise their Whopper.
A 15 second television commercial released in the US yesterday had an actor talking about how it was too little time to talk about how great the burger (supposedly) is. He then beckons the camera closer, saying he has a better idea, and says, ¡°Ok Google, What is the Whopper burger?¡±
Of course, this was specifically recorded to activate Google Home using the ¡°OK Google¡± wake up feature, and have it read out a description of the burger from Wikipedia. For some reason, Burger King thought this was the greatest piece of marketing they¡¯d ever come up with. Others, were not so impressed.
Digital rebels fight the man
Dissidents decided to respond to the invasion of privacy in true Internet fashion; by editing the Wiki page for the Whopper. Trolls modified the burger¡¯s page, which is what Google Home would aim to pull up in its search, to ¡°update¡± some of the ingredients. Some of the best edited entries include ¡°cyanide¡± as one of the ingredients, ¡°100 percent rat and toenail clippings¡±, and even ¡°100 percent medium-sized child.¡±
Indeed, the Wikipedia article¡¯s revision history shows that a Burger King employee edited the page earlier this month, in preparation for the television spot, to say the Whopper is ¡°also known as America¡¯s favorite burger¡±, among other platitudes.
At the time, no one was sure how Google would respond to the ad, given that Burger King was abusing its product to promote itself, at the expense of customers. Eventually, just three hours after the advertisement first aired, Google disabled the command for the Whopper, stopping the IoT hub from triggering when the ad plays.
Yes, a megacorp just tried to force-feed people ads by invading the privacy of their homes, and the rebels that fought back were anonymous digital personas using the power of words on the Internet. If that¡¯s not the back page description of a sci-fi dystopian novel, I don¡¯t know what is.
