New Zealand’s BK Girls kicked off television

Ana at Spare Room updates us on a fuss in New Zealand, where Burger King has been forced to pull some advertising off TV for basically falling afoul of the too-many-girls-in-bikinis rule. The BK Girls, who have their own MySpace page, are seen wearing bikinis in professional jobs, and we are told they “share everything—their bed, their clothes, exercise equipment and a love of ice-sculpture and horses.” The ads were deemed in violation of a New Zealand law “forbidding the use of sex appeal simply to draw attention to a product” (a law that, if adopted in the U.S., would render the airwaves all but silent). BK and its agency, Y&R, claim they wanted “to avoid any confusion that we were attempting to present our BK Girls in an overtly sexual manner.” There, at least, they seem to have failed completely.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

May 29, 2007 | Permalink