Burger Wars

The burger wars is a series of off and on comparative advertising campaigns consisting of mutually-targeted advertisements that highlight the intense competition between hamburger fast food chains McDonald's, Burger King and others in the United States. The term first came into use during the late 1970s due to an attempt by Burger King to generate increased market and mind-share by attacking the size of bigger rival McDonald's hamburgers.

By the mid 1980s, the constant spending on advertising began to affect the major players. In 1987, Burger King laid off more than a hundred people from its corporate headquarters in Miami, Florida, while Dublin, Ohio-based Wendy's reported its first quarterly operating loss since its founding in 1969. Conversely, McDonald's operating revenue and profit increase while its market share also grew. Smaller chains, such as Hardee's, worked to keep from getting caught up in the extensive financial brinkmanship by avoiding the expensive ad campaigns and by staying in smaller, more geographically limited locations.

The New York Times states that the poor economy of the late 2010 recessionary period has led to the return of the Burger Wars. Because of tightened budgets, consumers have been forced to seek value and the major fast food chains are increasingly competing for those consumer dollars. The Wendy's chain has been at the forefront of the revival, airing a series of ads that feature founder Dave Thomas' daughter Melinda Lou Morse, the original "Wendy", advertising a series of new burgers and reviving its Where's the beef? advertising slogan. A March 2014 report in USA Today noted that Burger King is reviving the Burger Wars, including introducing clones of the Big Mac and McRib sandwiches, in response to business declines at McDonald's.

In a 2007 advertising campaign, Jack In the Box aired a series of television ads in the United States that disparaged several rivals' Angus-beef burgers in which it was alleged that they equated Angus beef with an anus. Rival chain operator CKE claimed the ads were misleading because they confuse consumers by comparing sirloin, a cut of meat found on all cattle, with Angus, which is a breed of cattle. CKE, operator of the Carl's Jr. and Hardees chains, had been noted for running controversial ads and claimed that there was no comparison between the ads they were running and those of Jack In the Box because their ads did not insinuate their products came from an undesirable part of cows.

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