JKR

Burger King’s new packaging, they tell us,  “draws inspiration from the Andy Warhol Pop Art movement of the 1950s, the decade which also saw the world’s first Burger King unveiled in Jacksonville, Florida.” Do you get that from the work?

For me, the design is stylistically less Warhol, more Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein’s comic book style has been used to a shorthand retro Americana for decades – prints of his work are often hung in burger joints of variable quality.

I guess Burger King reference Warhol rather than Lichtenstein because he’s more famous, and quite cool. But it wasn’t “his” pop art movement, and name dropping him is arguably highfaluting. In agency-land we often use cultural references to help frame a concept, but if the work fails to fit with the frame it makes the exercise redundant. Perhaps it doesn’t matter (after all the name-drop has got plenty of PR), but I am of the opinion that frames are important, and should be judiciously used. Perhaps I spend too much time doing planning.

Warhol himself was a lover of strong brand icons – the Campbell’s soup cans and Coke bottles, which he faithfully reproduced in his trademark screen print style, elevating the everyday to the status of art. I think he would find Burger King’s homage amusing, and he was no stranger to brand tie-ins when alive, but the packs he painted were powerful badges long before he got to work. In the case of these particular designs, they are stylistic decoration without the strong central branding which Warhol himself was a fan of.

Warhol

Lichtenstein