Look at how much publicity it's getting them. The New York times is just now running a free ad for Burger King. Magic.

Next step - go for as much free publicity as united ;-)

You jest, but the strategy worked for our glorious leader ;-)

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

Never reason based on meaningless aphorisms.

This particular one leaves you completely vulnerable to trivial deception. Want to get away with something evil? Just pretend to be dumb, make it look like you don't know what you're doing, then people on the Internet will defend you as "merely incompetent, not evil."

Besides, did you even read the article? Burger King is doing this on purpose! Says so in the first paragraphs!

I mean, I hear you, but TBH I've seen slide decks from the planning of some fairly public failures like this one and ... marketing people at huge companies do not come from the general population.

>Asked whether he was concerned that consumers might find the spot invasive, he said, “We think about our guests’ perception and their perspective on how we interact with them, but on balance we felt this was a really positive way to connect with them.”

This paints their president as clueless about positive ways to connect with customer. FWIW, I don't think the president should be evil or incompetent.