🎧 Burger King Kids Club
Rob Long on the very worst way to come up with a TV show
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Remember the Burger King Kids Club, the chain’s ad campaign targeted to “the kids?” There was Kid Vid, the white, video game-playing leader; Jaws, the Black kid who loved to eat; and a boy in a wheelchair named (seriously) Wheels. The idea, Rob Long speculates, must have been devised at one of those offsite retreats, the kind TV execs love to do in Laguna. But hits rarely are born from suits tossing around banal concepts. Instead they begin with a writers’ novel idea, the equivalent of a delicious-looking hamburger.
Transcript here.
Love it. I’m an OG listener of your podcast and I was on the marketing team of Burger King that did the Kids Club. You were almost dead on with how it happened but way off on the alternative. You can’t market food to kids because that doesn’t matter and we tried doing food only for adults and it didn’t work. Let me know if you want to know more but so much fun to listen today!
Amazing! And yeah, I guess kids don't really respond to product shots. They want a story. Even one with Wheels and Lingo.