Burger King is the fast food chain where everyone is welcome to be their own way, to express their own self. It’s an ongoing briefing of the brand to come up with new ideas that push diversity as a theme, representing all ways of loving and living. The LGBTQIAP+ subject is one of the main causes supported by the brand, that has been also one of the major sponsors of the LGBTQIAP+ parade in São Paulo for the last 5 years.

Brazil is going through a conservative wave in its political field, with the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro as an exponent, publicly delivering and endorsing homophobic behavior.

Many homophobic people usually try to disguise their prejudice as free speech. And one way of doing it is by making “inoffensive” questions in an attempt to disqualify the LGBTQIAP+ forms of expression. The most common question they ask is “how am I gonna explain it to my children?”. Well… turns up children know how to explain it better than conservatives do.

It usually doesn’t need much to call the attention of conservative people in Brazil. Just by touching in the LGBTQIAP+ theme is enough to spark their rage. In an attempt to show that love and diversity should be simple to understand, Burger King’s message ended up starting a huge discussion within the society. And everything just by giving a simple twist to the homophobic question “how am I gonna explain it to my children?” and inviting kids to talk about their welcoming points of view about the cause.

The LGBTQIAP+ subject is a conversation that targets the society as a whole, not only the LGBTQIAP+ community. For a progressive society, this topic should have no boundaries in terms of age or social condition.

The insight for the idea was as simple as kids behavior: kids know how to explain everything, in their own way. So, Burger King invited a group of kids with their parents to a conversation. The result was transformed into a video, used in both social media and open Tv channels. A simple, direct and heartwarming message proving that “if kids can explain something, so can you”.

“When I see two men holding hands on the streets, what I see is just two men holding hands on the streets” a young boy says.

An explanation like that shows that love should be a simple matter to understand. And that’s what happened when Burger King interviewed kids, asking them to explain the LGBTQIAP+ theme for a commercial. The video featured kids of many ages, from different family situations at a Burger King store, but they all had one thing in common: a welcoming point of view to the cause. A single video aired on International Pride Day and suddenly everyone was talking about Burger King. From politicians to family WhatsApp groups to TV presenters.

The commercial was the most hated of the year, getting response from conservative people, TV hosts and politicians.

The commercial was also the most loved of the year, getting support from the community, media vehicles, celebrities and even the McDonald’s cover girl.

Hating or loving it, Burger King has set the conversation around the country, earning more than 500.000.000 impressions with a single video, and getting the brand to the Global Trending Topics on Twitter for three times. It could be said that never has the LGBTQIAP+ theme been so normalized after kids had joined the conversation.