The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2021
Burger King UK's 'women belong in the kitchen' tweet backfired on Women's Day
It was meant to open a thread promoting a scholarship for female chefs. Without the context it read as a sexist slur, and hours of backlash forced an apology.
Burger King · 2021-03-08
What happened
On 8 March 2021, International Women's Day, Burger King UK's Twitter account posted a single line: 'Women belong in the kitchen.' It was the first tweet of a thread. The tweets that followed explained the point: only a small percentage of chefs and head chefs in the UK are women, and Burger King was launching a scholarship to help female employees pursue culinary careers. The provocation was meant to flip a sexist cliché and draw attention to the gap.
Read on its own, the opening tweet was indistinguishable from the sexism it claimed to challenge. The replies ran to thousands within hours — condemnation, mockery and pledges to boycott. A branding expert said the company had tried to be 'too clever and too creative.' The thread's actual message, the scholarship, was drowned out by its own headline.
After about twelve hours of debate, Burger King UK apologised and deleted the tweet. 'We got our initial tweet wrong and we're sorry,' it said, conceding it was a mistake not to include the full explanation in the first tweet. The brand's global chief marketing officer, Fernando Machado, acknowledged that posting a notorious sexist trope without immediate context had been wrong. The scholarship programme itself went ahead.
Why it happened
- The bait headline was published hours before the context that justified it — on social media the first tweet is the whole story, not the lead.
- A trope about women's place was used to promote gender equity, so the message and the medium contradicted each other.
- The thread assumed readers would keep scrolling; most judged the campaign on the one line they saw.
The lesson
If a message needs the next tweet to be acceptable, the first tweet is the campaign — and most of the audience never reads the second one. Test the provocation standing alone.
Aftermath
Burger King UK said it deleted the original tweet because the thread had attracted abusive comments it did not want to leave space for. The HER scholarship for female chefs proceeded. The episode became a stock example of the gap between a thread's intent and its first line.
Sources
- Adweek — Burger King Apologizes and Deletes Tweet That Said 'Women Belong in the Kitchen'
- ABC News Australia — Burger King apologises for a tweet that said 'Women belong in the kitchen'
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