Burger King Won't Take a Hint; Alters TV Ad To Evade Google's Block (washingtonpost.com)

ewhac writes: Earlier this week, Burger King released a broadcast television ad that opened with an actor saying, "Ok, Google, what is the Whopper?" thereby triggering any Google Home device in hearing range to respond to the injected request with the first line from the Whopper's Wikipedia page. Google very properly responded to the injection attack by fingerprinting the sound sample and blocking it from triggering responses. However, it seems Burger King and/or its ad agency are either unwilling or congenitally incapable of getting the hint, and has released an altered version of the ad to evade Google's block. According to spokesperson Dara Schopp, BK regards the ad as a success, as it has increased the brand's "social conversation" on Twitter by some 300%. It seems that Burger King thinks that malware-laden advertising infesting webpages is a perfectly wonderful idea (in principle, at least), and has taken it to the next level by reaching through your TV speakers and directly messing with your digital devices. You may wish to consider alternate vendors for your burger needs.

Comments

Google Should Hit Burger King Where it Counts

[dlleigh]

To make sure the world knows that this kind of behavior won't be tolerated, Google should do something that will annoy the board of directors of Burger King's parent company. Here's some pseudo code for a response from Google Home to the Burger King ad:

if (Burger King stock price is down):
      say "The Whopper is a hamburger from Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands International whose stock price is currently falling."
else if (Burger King stock price is up):
      say "The Whopper is a hamburger from Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands International whose stock price is currently considered overvalued by", list of market gurus
else:
      say "The Whopper is a hamburger from Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands International whose stock is stagnant."