Burger King ad tries to get your Google Home to list the ingredients of a Whopper

Folks, we have a real whopper of a tale to pass along to you tonight. Do you remember the story we told you back in January about the television news anchor who accidentally activated personal assistant Alexa on quite a few Amazon Echo and Amazon Dot devices? To refresh your memory, the anchorman was talking about a 6-year old girl who ordered a $162 dollhouse and four-pounds of cookies through Alexa. When he mentioned that name and read the story, several Echo and Dot smart speakers each started the process of ordering a dollhouse and cookies.

That was sort of the idea behind a new television ad run by Miami-based Burger King. The spot, which runs only 15-seconds, features a BK employee holding a Whopper in the palm of his hand. With only seconds left in the ad, he notes that there isn't enough time left to recite all of the fresh ingredients in the Whopper. So he comes up with an idea. With the camera zooming in, the BK employee says "OK Google, what is the Whopper Burger?"

Google Home devices in earshot of the television speaker responded by having Google recite the first few lines of the Burger King Whopper's Wikipedia page. Clever, BK, but not clever enough. Not wanting to set a precedent that could disrupt sales of Google Home in what is beginning to be a competitive market, Google now has made the necessary changes in order to disable the response. Now, Google Home will not respond to the question about the Whopper if it comes from this particular Burger King ad. Anyone else can ask the question and still hear the beginning of the Whopper's Wikipedia page.

Even Wikipedia trolls got into the act, changing the Burger King's Whopper page to include ingredients like "toe-nail clippings." Wikipedia has locked down the page which means that only authorized administrators can make changes to it.

Check out the ad by clicking on the video at the top of the story.

source: BurgerKing via AdWeek