On September 04 2008, I wrote a short blog bitching about the ugliness of Burger King Malaysia website. The mismatch between the web page (as shown below, with my remarks on it) and the brand identity of the world’s second largest fast-food chain is, well, appalling, especially in today’s Ajaxy web landscape.

Burger King Malaysia – THEN

Now, the BK Malaysia website is awful no more (not sure when the new site went live, though).

Burger King Malaysia Website – NOW

If Burger King Malaysia really were in the process of developing its website in early September, I wonder why it didn’t use a more tasteful Under Construction page? But, anyway, at least now BK Malaysia website looks more delicious than BK Singapore‘s (see below).

Burger King Singapore Website

Burger King Corporation should imposed Web design guidelines onto its franchisers, so its brand image / look-and-feel remains consistent across the many brand microsites setup by its franchisors around world.

Spanking New Website of Burger King Malaysia originally appeared on GreyReview on December 4, 2008.

The ‘Under Construction’ web page of Burger King Malaysia is one of the most awful pages I’ve seen in recent times. It is so “Web 0.5″ and it bears very little resemblance to the Burger King’s main website.

Here are three ‘sucky’ elements, which I’ve highlighted in the screenshot below:

• Logo – The logo used is not the current Burger King’s logo
• Brand Tag – The “The Fire’s Ready” campaign was created by Young & Rubicam in 2004. It was an unsuccessful branding initiative and Burger King axed the creative agency after less than a year. The current tag adopted by Burger King is “Have It Your Way.”
• Image – The burger image at the bottom is just plain bad. Period.

‘Under Construction’ Page of Burger King Malaysia

Burger King is the world’s second largest fast-food chain with more than 10,000 stores operating in over 65 countries. In Malaysia, there are over 20 Burger King outlets and the franchise-holder, Cosmo Restaurants Sdn Bhd plans to spend RM27 million (~US$8 million) over the next five years to open 50 more outlets across the nation.

For a fast-food giant like Burger King, I would expect a more presentable “Under Construction” page. The Web is over 10 years old and web designs have improved, leaps and bounds. Seeing such page design, especially by a global corporation, is quite mind-boggling. Burger King should just take the amateurish, poorly designed web page offline. Seriously, I just don’t see the page helping its branding infrastructure.

Burger King Malaysia Website is Awful originally appeared on GreyReview on September 4, 2008.