This story has been updated to reflect the news of the day.
Burger King’s decision to play the phrase “women belong in the kitchen” in a tweet intended to promote culinary education scholarships backfired on Monday, prompting the brand to later delete a tweet from its Burger account King in the UK who was misinterpreted worldwide as an international Women’s Day effort that missed the mark.
A full-page ad running in The New York Times shows the line in large font and follows with several lines that explain the idea behind the Burger King HER scholarship (Helping Equalize Restaurants), including the low representation of women in office from chef and chef to everywhere in the industry. On Twitter, however, the use of the line was quickly misinterpreted. The Burger King of the United Kingdom tweeted only the line “Women belong to the kitchen” on Monday morning, and it was only in subsequent tweets that the intended meaning was explained.
Later, on March 8, Burger King UK deleted the tweet and explained its reasoning in a separate Twitter post. “We heard you. We thought our initial tweet was wrong and sorry,” he started in a tweet. A second tweet read: “We decided to delete the original tweet after our apology. We were told that there were abusive comments on the topic and we don’t want to leave the space open for that.”
The campaign comes from David Miami.