In 1985, Burger King spent $40 million dollars on a campaign known as “Where’s Herb?” Herb was supposedly the only man in America who had never eaten a Whopper. The campaign was universally lauded as the “most elaborate advertising flop of the decade.” I’ve taken a totally informal survey of my friends and almost no one remembers the Herb campaign. I remember, Burger King. You might not have captured the world’s attention, but you touched the life of one very special little boy, and because of that, your campaign can never be considered a total flop.

First, the commercial that started it all:

Note the total absence of any kind of humor in this commercial. This is in the wake of the “Where’s the Beef” ads, and suddenly commercials had to be quirky to get noticed. So we have all the staples of the “quirky” ad … the dead-pan dialogue, the over-enthusiastic narrator, the hokey music … but there isn’t a single joke anywhere to be found. It’s very disconcerting to watch something that presumes itself humorous without making a single stab at humor.

I’m not sure if this was planned from the beginning, but Herb’s identity was eventually revealed, to little fanfare. The poor sod who played Herb was sent to Burger King restaurants around the country to hang out until someone recognized him, sort of like a real life “Where’s Waldo?” The first person to spot Herb in each restaurant won $5,000. I would love to know how this contest worked in real life. Did they send Herb into restaurants unattended? And was it his job to determine who first spotted him? I could see this getting really ugly–patrons breaking into fistfights over who saw Herb first while the sorry bastard in the Herb costume is forced to referee. In the end, it’s not so much a campaign for Burger King as it is for violence and loitering.