Representation and Interpretation: Sexual Semiotics and Burger King

The Burger King ad in full, courtesy of The Telegraph

In 2009, Burger King released an advertisement wherein a double entendre, aided through both visual imagery and language, left both critics and consumers disgusted, and a model violated. Despite a previous history of releasing advertisements with sexual innuendos, the imagery of a woman with her mouth open in front of a hovering seven-inch burger was criticised as going too far, the “unappetising references to oral sex” becoming “distasteful” (Miller 2009). For such a popularised company, the decision to represent an advertisement in this way leads me to question the genuine accuracy of the term “sex sells”.

“Semiotics shows how the relationship between the sign and the ‘something else’ results from what our society has taught us” (Curtin 2006, p. 52).

Burger King’s use of signs to capture audience’s attention is demonstrated through the relationship between the signifier, visual imagery of the woman and the burger, and the signified, the idea of oral sex. A cornerstone in semiotic study is how meaning is created through visual representation, in addition to the “processes by which we comprehend or attribute meaning” (Curtin 2006, p. 51). By encoding the message with these specific placements, audiences can decode the idea behind the marketing strategy, with interpretations being informed by the cultural and social context of which we live in.

When considering the original theories of media interpretation which stated that messaging is linear, this advertisement would be limited to the promotion of a simply really good burger, that’ll “blow your mind” convincing consumers that do not want to miss out on this. Knowing that messaging is multidirectional and influenced by interpretation, it can be suggested that the sexual connotation of this advertisement aims to target those individuals who won’t take this promotion at face value. Rather, they become active consumers who associate this depiction with the sexual imagery it promotes, but will it actually convince them to buy this burger? Multiple critics believed that whilst people’s attention is caught, they generally aren’t persuaded or motivated to go out and buy this product (Miller 2009).

This advertisement has the possibility to be read in different ways depending on how audiences interpret the represented signs. An individual’s ideological position heavily informs their reading, demonstrating that audiences with lower, or more innocent, intellect may not understand the sexual connotations of the advertisement. Every advertisement has multiple possible interpretations, and it is up to the audience’s framework of knowledge to ‘read’ images, but it is widely recognised that most individuals would understand the underlying messaging of this Burger King advertisement. This is as sexuality is a fundamental occurrence in the human lifestyle, allowing for a collective understanding of what this imagery is representing. This collective understanding rises from the meaning societal and cultural ideas have attributed to this specific imagery, thus developing it into a sign that represents a significance “other to what the image or object literally is” (Curtin 2006, p. 52). This leaves little doubt that the creators didn’t explicitly represent this imagery for the purpose of targeting the human population through shock factor and young adult style humour.

References

Curtin B 2006, ‘Semiotics and visual representation’, Semantic Scholar, vol. 3, pp. 51-62.

Miller, J R 2009, ‘Critics Cringe at Ad for Burger King's Latest Sandwich’, Fox News, 30 June,

viewed 24 March 2025,

<https://www.foxnews.com/story/critics-cringe-at-ad-for-burger-kings-latest-sandwich>.

Sanghani, R 2014, ‘“Burger King raped my face”, claims model on angry YouTube video’,

The Telegraph, 7 August, viewed 24 March 2025 <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11018413/Burger-King-raped-my-face-claims-model-on-angry-YouTube-video.html>.