Washington - A Burger King ad, designed to trigger Google's voice activated home smart speaker and have the device advertise the Whopper no longer works.
The ad, released Wednesday, features an actor dressed as a
Burger King employee, who says, "OK, Google: What is the Whopper
burger?" The line is meant to trigger the device to reel off the
definition of a Whopper using the first line of the burger's Wikipedia page.
Roughly three hours after the ad launched, the ad stopped working.
Google's Home would only light up in response to the commercial's prompt and
stay mum (although it will give you the first line of the Wikipedia article if
you explicitly request the definition of a "Whopper burger").
The fast-food company confirmed that the ad no longer
triggers the speaker, but it said that it will still air the ad, and indicated
that the ad may start working again.
"You'll have to tune in tonight to see if the
commercial triggers the Whopper sandwich definition response," said Burger
King Spokesman, Brooke Scher Mogan.
Mogan said Burger King saw the ad as an opportunity to
"do something exciting with the emerging technology of intelligent
personal assistant devices."
Google did not respond to requests for comment. A person
familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak on the record said the
fast-food chain did not consult Google before making the commercial.
While commercials often those about home hubs have
accidentally triggered voice assistants in people's homes before, this seems to
be the first time an ad has tried to do it intentionally. Based on comments on
the ad's YouTube page, many consumers did not appreciate having their devices
hijacked.
"When you take over someone’s phone or tablet and have
it do your own remote commands intentionally, you are HACKING," read one
comment.
In fact, it may be a blessing for Burger King that the ad no
longer works as intended because the advertisement almost immediately backfired
on the fast-food chain.
Once the ad started gaining attention, Wikipedia users began
altering the first line of the article about Burger King's Whopper. These edits
included references to the burger as "cancer-causing" and stating
that its ingredients include "cyanide."
It appears that Burger King itself tried to fix the
Wikipedia problem. The first sentence changed to a suspiciously glowing
description of the Whopper, authored by user "Fermachado123" a name
that sounds similar to, Fernando Machado, Burger King's senior vice president
for global brand management.
Burger King did not confirm or deny that, Machado edited the
article. Privacy concerns about voice-activated speakers and the
connected home have been on the rise as more companies have introduced these
products, putting pressure on the makers of voice operated security systems and
door locks to ensure that their devices can't be triggered by unauthorized
voices.
The place of advertising on the Google Home and similar
products has been thoroughly debated by users as they have become more
commonplace. Many users don't want to be spammed with ads delivered by what
they consider personal assistants.
Google subjected
itself to criticism after Home users heard what appeared to be an unprompted
plug for Disney's "Beauty and Beast" when the film opened last month.
Google said at the time that mentioning the film wasn't
meant to be an ad but simply a notice to users about what was timely that day,
according to a statement provided to CNET.
"We're continuing to experiment with new ways to
surface unique content for users and we could have done better in this
case," a Google spokesman said.
WASHINGTON POST