Burger King's recent television spots make an obvious nostalgic appeal with their soundtracks derived from 60s, 70s and 80s pop music and TV theme songs.  At first, the ads made some kind of direct sense, as when the two guys returned to the Burger King they frequented as young men, remembering fondly the cute chicks behind the counter singing, and finding the same two chicks, somehow less aged than they are, still singing, still behind the counter.  (I'll leave it to whoever might happen by to pick up on the unconscious socio-political message of this ad and run with it.)

Using pop songs in ads is an old trick. A typical example of the genre is the old Heinz ketchup ad using Carly Simon singing "Anticipation."  The song and the images of kethcup making its slow way through the neck of the bottle focused attention on an allegedly significant quality of the product: its thickness.  But not all brands have the advantage Heinz enjoyed, of having a product upon whose inherent qualities it pays to draw attention.

That could be the case with Burger King, whose attempts to argue that its burgers taste better because they're char-broiled have failed.  It seems that most fast-food consumers aren't basing their purchase decisions strictly on objective differences in the products.

The remaining option for Burger King is of course to establish a "brand" for themselves, like McDonald's has so effectively with their annoyingly memorable jingles and marketing tradition of "Food, Folks and Fun."  The question is, what brand is Burger King creating?

(1) The race card.  Perhaps Burger King has some survery data that suggests that Burger King has a niche market open to it: African-Americans.  So far the songs have all been sung by black singers, and the customers and counter chicks in the first ad are black.  It would be somewhat odd if Burger King was disproportionately favored by African-American customers, but not unbelievable.  One might object that marketing people and Burger King execs would never be that crass.  One might also imagine that pigs can fly.

(2) The gender card.  Another interesting subliminal feature of the recent ads is that all of the singers are women.  How this serves a marketing strategy is harder to reckon.  Do women make more fast-food purchases than men?  Well, women probably make more of these purchases for entire families, and something about the song selection suggests (to me at least) working women who are "moving on up," and so forth, or at least working behind a fast-food counter.  The other live-action shot features a young black woman in Hollywood's concept of a college dorm room eating Burger King cinnamon rolls.  The voice-over suggests that the rolls are just like mom used to make, to which the woman responds, "please, my mother was an investment banker."

Whoa.  Not to trumpet my own staggering intelligence, but that last bit is an overwhelming piece of evidence that Burger King is pursuing both of these market niches.  But the strategy is even more clever than that.

Whenever I see the cinnamon roll ad, and hear that young woman say her mom was an investment banker, I can't stop my brain from making a quick calculation and informing me that it doesn't add up.  How many African-American women were investment bankers starting in the late 70s or early 80s?  I can't imagine many.

It's all very complicated.  Burger King is cashing in on the current vogue of 70s and 80s nostalgia, an important element of which (as of all nostalgia) is the fictional idealization of the nostalgic object, with the usual result that the updated image of that object is exaggerated in some respects, softened in others, and in general distorted to fit the needs of the present.  (Nostalgia has nothing to do with a desire for the return of the past; it's a way of coping with our anxieties and fears of inadequacy for dealing with the present.  The Cold War is beginning already to undergo this tranformation in our popular imagination, as we find the prospect of continual snits with Saddam Hussein increasingly alarming, irritating, and boring.  If only we could introduce him to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.)

The needs of the present, reflected in the Burger King ads, are to reconcile the economic position faced by most African-Americans and the desire to advance.  The cinnamon rolls ad serves this strategy by attempting to connect African-American upward mobility to traditional African-American ways of life.  The girl's in college, enjoying a sweet while studying, working hard, trying to advance and improve herself and her chances in the world, just like her mom did.  It's entirely unlikely that her mom really was an investment banker, but it's less unlikely that she'd become one.  The girl's informal tone of voice and diction implies in a delicate way her connection to black culture.  No matter how hard she works, how educated she becomes, how high up the corporate ladder she rises, she needn't worry about being true to her roots.  She will never lose sight of herself as she focuses on success.

The ad's message is, basically: you won't have to sacrifice your heritage or your womanhood in order to achieve life's rewards, because there's always Burger King's cinnamon buns.  Indeed, what a wonderful common thread connects us all, no matter where we come from: everyone likes sweet rolls.