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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers
- [00:09]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [00:22]
Amazon Music Announcer
Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed during that perfect meditation flow on Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad free podcast episodes so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts. Ad free included with Prime Foreign.
- [01:00]
Mike Pesca
2026 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. So some March Madness updates you're going to want to know. Who's out? Braden Huff from Gonzaga. He's not going to be returning. He's out. Also, here's an update from Alabama. Agents with the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force conducted a search of the 400 block of 30th Avenue and there they recovered more than a pound of marijuana paraphern million cash. Aiden Holloway is or was a player in Alabama. Was charged with first degree possession of marijuana and failure to affix a tax stamp. Now the marijuana I understand, but the failure to affix a tax stamp, that just riles me. He won't be playing. Also out basi's chief Brigadier general Golam Reza Solemani. He's going to be out and as is and this is a big one two punch. It'll really hurt them. Ali Larajani officially out. They're out for the tournament. They're out for beyond. This will definitely hurt their draft status. Taken out, you know, filling out brackets. I have North Carolina State not only winning the playing game but actually beating byu. I think NC State will go far. I don't think the Islamic State is going far. Lots of bracketologists have the Islamic State eliminated early. Don't know about that. It was a popular pick among the generals, the floor generals. I just can't see them making it all the way to the Final Four. Allah willing. Especially without their playmaker. Ali Lara Johnny. And this has been a March Madness update. Ah, the madness of March on the show today. If this is getting you down, if your bubble has burst. Well, the topic for how to our sister cousin evil twin. I think we're the evil twin of how to how to is a very nice show we're talking about taking psychedelics for your mental health, how to do that? And we hear from our expert, Dr. Will Vandeveer.
- [02:58]
Dr. Will Vandeveer
The very strong attachment to having things be the way they are, including who I am, like my attachment to my identity, my reality, to my way of life, as tight as that can be, psychedelic therapy can open that up for a period of time where people can feel the fresh air coming into their mind of, well, wait, maybe there's different ways to look at life. There's different ways to live.
- [03:21]
Mike Pesca
And can I ask you, is that an analogy or is that a physical change?
- [03:26]
Dr. Will Vandeveer
The observation by functional MRI is a physical change. It's been described as shaking the snow globe.
- [03:32]
Mike Pesca
We'll be shaking it up on the GIST today right now with a spiel about Burger King and an interview conducted with the king of hostage negotiation, Mickey Bergman. He's with Global Reach. We got a very good reaction to our discussion with Mickey in part one. So let's bring this home as Mickey might say, Mickey Bergman, up next. This episode is brought to you by Pocket Hose, the world's number one expandable hose. What does that mean? Well, you know, hoses, they get kinks and creases at the spigot, but Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease around your home. And they're rust proof and anti burst. They shrink the back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. This has genuinely changed my life. You know, hoses demand such a position of prominence in the garden, in the yard, you have other tools that you can put away. Not the hose. The hose demands to be paid attention to, but the pocket hose is the perfect solution. And so when I use the pocket hose and then coil it up and then put it away and it takes up a tiny fraction of what those old obstreperous hoses used to take up. Pocket Hose has been a life changer. For a limited time. My listeners can get a free pocket Pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text gist to 64,000. That's gist to 64,000 for your 2 free gifts with purchase. Gist to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. See Terms for details. The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers
- [05:34]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [05:47]
Burger King Announcer
With its two juicy beef patties and three slices of melted cheese topped with tangy Big Arch sauce. The Big Arch is what happens when you start making a McDonald's burger and never stop. The Big Arch, the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet. For a limited time.
- [06:06]
Mike Pesca
We're joined once more by Mickey Bergman, who's the CEO of Global Reach, also the vice president and executive director of the Richardson center for Global Engagement. He gets hostages and out of hostile situations, he frees political prisoners. And yesterday on the show we talked about some of his high profile cases, who he has to deal with in the apparatus of government, US and abroad. But now I want to ask him about himself. Mickey, welcome back to the gist.
- [06:35]
Mickey Bergman
Thank you. Good to be back.
- [06:36]
Mike Pesca
What are your essential skills that you bring to this job? Highlight, if you will, some of the skills that might surprise us because things like patience and the gift of gab that would come to mind.
- [06:48]
Mickey Bergman
Well, I'll say the, the, the most important thing that I've developed my expertise in is actually emotional intelligence. And no, I never studied psychology and I am a male born in Israel and I think emotional intelligence is not exactly our brand. So I had to learn it throughout life in a significant way. But I think one of the things for me that is so important people don't recognize in this. We always think this is high stakes negotiations on national interest and the top kind of things. And most of the time it is about human beings and it's about relationships. And for me is the ability to understand and see and accept fully, not fake fully that individuals are complicated, that there is good and bad in all of us and different circumstances bring different elements out. And even when people are responsible for really, really bad things, you can still find humanity in them, doesn't absolve them of their responsibility and accountability for the terrible things that they're responsible for. But if you can find that humanity and connect with that in a genuine way, you might be able to get from them things, you might be able to influence how they see things and how they make decisions. And that is what I spend a lot of time on. And people, it's a lot of empathy. And people get confused a lot when they hear me talk, especially because my job is to bring people home and to talk to some of those people in Venezuela, in Russia, in Iran, Hamas, North Korea. People like to confuse it with as if I'm justifying them or legitimizing them that's not what I do, but I do understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. And if. Because if I don't, I won't be able to get anything from them. It might be a nice little exchange of punches of and accusations, but I need to get somebody home. So I think that that's the biggest thing that we bring and that I've been able to kind of learn through my life and try and bring into that field.
- [08:59]
Mike Pesca
What's a tangible example of connection that existed with any of your negotiations that you could think of?
- [09:06]
Mickey Bergman
Nicolas Maduro, I'll give him as an example here now, former president of Venezuela. He's sitting in custody in the US Right now after.
- [09:14]
Mike Pesca
Have the Venezuelans contracted you to negotiate him out?
- [09:17]
Mickey Bergman
Oh, no, no. And I wouldn't only work on behalf of Americans, but I have been in negotiations with him and as well as with his number two, who's now the president and Delsey Rodriguez and her brother. Jorge Rodriguez was the head of national assembly over there. But Nicolas Maduro and Governor Richardson had a relationship that spanned from before Nicolas Maduro was the head of Venezuela. And it was always friendly and they figured out how to do things. Doesn't mean that Richardson legitimized or agreed with anything that Maduro was doing, but he needed that relationship. That was the weapon or the leverage that he had. We had 10Americans held in Venezuela when Governor Richardson died. We actually were supposed to go to Venezuela and try and negotiate for their release. We had an idea, we had something that we worked with the US Government that we knew we just needed to go to Maduro to propose that to him. And if we get a yes, then the US Government will be able to get them back home. And then he died and he was the relationship. And of course, it was a hard day for me when he passed away. We didn't expect that. But I also knew that he would want me to use his death in order to get another batch of Americans back home. And 48 hours after he died, before his funeral, I reached out to our Venezuelan colleagues and said, look, as you heard, our friend passed away unfortunately this weekend. But I want to ask you if in honor of his life and your friendship with him, you would still be willing to receive me and my colleagues, because the idea that he wanted to bring to you is still solid and can still work. And it took all of 15 minutes for the Venezuelans to get back and said it'll be honored for us to receive you in Caracas. And listen, because we respect Governor Richardson and. And five days after the funeral, we were on a plane. The US Government didn't know that we were doing it at the time. We were on a plane to go and meet and do this. And for that, I made sure that Barbara Richardson, Governor Richardson's wife, wrote a handwritten letter to Nicolas Maduro telling him about her experience and the stories that Bill told her after he came back from Venezuela. We brought a little personal gift. It wasn't worth anything. It was emotional. It was a personal artifact from the governor because I know that Nicolas Maduro, again, take away all the bad stuff that he's responsible for. I'm not diminishing that he's a very spiritual and religious man. And we knew that that will resonate with him and that will resonate with his colleagues that this is a very personal thing and it will help us get a warm introduction to what it was that we were proposing. And it worked. And he did. In fact, the language that was just like, you know, Governor Richardson is with us in spirit here in this. And again, it wasn't fake. It wasn't manipulative. It was genuine. And we came back with an agreement of how to handle this, and we brought it back to the White House, and two months later, we had these Americans released home within exactly that deal. So this is one example of how this emotional intelligence in that relationship actually gets played in something that otherwise would have been basically a punching bag of arguments without any results.
- [13:04]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, yeah. And I'm just speculating, but I could see why Richardson, good at his job, might have had that connection with Maduro. His mom is Mexican. I mean, his dad was Anglo American, Mexican. And he is. They are both Catholic. And you use the word a couple of times about honor. And I think that maybe you understand these things better than I. But that maybe also struck a chord. What to do to honor the dead might have worked in the Maduro context, in a way. It might not have worked with a North Korean, let's say.
- [13:38]
Mickey Bergman
Correct. But I can tell you similarly again, another example, the military leader of the government in Myanmar. We, when Danny Fenster, he's a journalist from Detroit, he was held there as a prisoner. And we managed to get a meeting. We knew that we're going to Myanmar. It was around COVID vaccinations. That was in the middle of the pandemic. And we knew we were going to have one meeting with the leader and we needed in one meeting. That was the first time that the governor was going to meet him. And we had to come up With a plan of how they make a personal relationship, an emotional attachment that by the end of that meeting, the Governor can ask him for a personal favor. And we went over like, I studied his personality. I didn't know anything about his policies, but I found things about his personality that we can relate to. The fact that as a military leader that just deposed the great Aung San SUU Kyi from power, he was very soft spoken, he's an introvert, he's a shy guy, he's a devout Buddhist. And the approach between him and the Governor was based on that. We never raised the American prisoner in front of him and anybody else because that would make him need to be defensive and show strength. And so we waited until the end and the Governor had to pull him out on a one on one meeting on the side and not talk about that, but tell him, you know, I've been a leader, I've been meeting leaders for 30 years, heads of countries, heads of militaries. And I know everybody tells you you're not supposed to be loud and bombastic, but you're different. You have a different kind of leadership. You're quiet leadership. And it's very special and very powerful. And don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. And with that message, you get into a person again, it was genuine, it wasn't manipulative. But in that, in that way, you get into, into the leader's mind saying, hey, Richardson actually paid attention to me. It's not just a meeting on the
- [15:41]
Mike Pesca
calendar because her power was based on having the megaphone and the approval of the world and appearing on magazines. And he's there with her as the rival, saying, this isn't fair, this isn't the way, this isn't legitimate. Some subsequent events maybe show that she wasn't, you know, a wholly being. And so you're meeting.
- [16:03]
Mickey Bergman
We had our fights with her too. And it's in my book for anybody who's interested in that. But with the leader, the second message that it resonated with him is that this thing that might be a source of insecurity for him is actually something that the Governor sees as a strength. And that made that connection. And that meeting became very, very personal. And at that point, the Governor was like, look, I'm going to be criticized for coming here to see you. People will think I'm legitimizing. It's like, ah, forget about them. I have thick skin, I'm a politician, I can handle it. But if you want to help me with these people, there's this young journalist here, if you give him to me, oh, it will shut them all up. And, like, with a smile and a laugh and stuff like that, that kind of human connection. And on the spot, the leader decided he's going to give us Danny Fencer. Now, it took another two weeks to execute that, but that was the decision point. It was in one meeting over several minutes, and that was it. It was a personal connection that was based on a personality, not a national interest. And you're right, the general looked at it and said, hey, Aung San SUU Kyi used to be friends of Bill Richardson, and they had a fight. She couldn't handle her friends, but here I am, and I'll show her how to handle things, and this will be a positive visit. So there's all of these layers that come into it that you build on this.
- [17:25]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, that's such fascinating psychiatry or psychology. Identify the person's insecurity and then celebrate it and then tell them how much you like that aspect of their personality. That works, by the way. That could work with Putin if you get to it.
- [17:42]
Mickey Bergman
That works with a lot of people. And again, it's. And the thing with it, it's. People like to, you know, they associate the word manipulation with things that are negative. It's like it's genuine. I mean. I mean, the guy, you meet him, he's like, he's a devout Buddhist. Like, it's. There's such a. You sit in front of him, it's like, how is this guy responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of his own people? There is something that you have to understand of how he is. He doesn't wake up in the morning thinking, oh, evil, let's see what evil I can do today. There is a narrative. There's something the way he sees things that justify what he does. And if as soon as you understand what that is, you can start influencing how they. How they. How they act. And you're right, it's true about him. It's true about a lot of other leaders that we. We like to say, oh, it's good versus evil. It's more complicated than that.
- [18:36]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. So as you mentioned the beginning of this part of the interview, and as people can hear in your voice, you are an Israeli. Israeli man. Israel, not the popular country in the world these days. Has that changed, or has that gotten in the way of what you've been doing on the world stage?
- [18:53]
Mickey Bergman
Look, I've been in the United states for almost 26 years now, and I can't get rid of my accent. I tried. And people. Oh, that's a good bio.
- [19:03]
Mike Pesca
Right? You come in, they do a little. Their, their forces give you the one pager on Mickey and he served in the IDF and so forth.
- [19:10]
Mickey Bergman
Yeah, Nobody. You can't hide who you are, and if you try, then you're fake and that doesn't work. You have to be authent. I have to trust that when people meet me and they see like, and I, you know, I'm not. I can't bluff, I can't play poker. I don't have a poker face. I'm very aware of my personality. I'm not a bully. I lead in with my vulnerability with people. That's how I build trust with them and it's genuine. And so that's kind of knowing who I am as a personality and leaning into that and that works. And that's how I ended up like meeting and working with the Iranians. They're supposed to be like my biggest enemy. Or with Hamas on negotiations, it's not about, oh, you know, those people are terrible. Let's you and I be friends. You have to accept and be able to contain all of the bad things in it and still work and figure out because you have to remember you have one objective in front of you, and that is saving a certain one life. In a case of a hostage was
- [20:12]
Mike Pesca
the Hamas negotiation over Galad Shalit Gilachalit
- [20:16]
Mickey Bergman
and then Gaza, the hostages since October 7th. We were highly involved in these negotiations as well in the different rounds of them at a personal cost for me, because some of the things that we had to do, again we were prioritizing hostages and some of the actions we had to take appear to be as if we're trying to help or to stop a war and all of these kind of things. And like, again, like, it's. I have my opinions about how the war should be conducted and how to do it, but irrelevant to my, to my job. I will do what I need to do in order to get somebody home. And I got a lot of hate for that on some levels, but that's on a personal part and a personal choice of how you accept it. But I have to tell you, one of the things that is just less spoken about when we. When you're able to get somebody home and we see that's where it hits TV and everybody celebrates. You know, Brittney Griner came home, or Trevor Reid or Paul Whelan came home and the hostages from Gaza came home. And we celebrate and we're happy and we're excited, and we love to hear the stories of what happened to them and how they came out. Their crisis is not over.
- [21:32]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [21:33]
Mickey Bergman
It is just moving to a new phase. And it's not only for them. It's for their families, those who fought for them and all of the energy and resources. And a lot of them lost their jobs because they dedicated years to fight for their loved ones. And they're out of resources and they're out of support to give. But the hostages came back and they still need that. And beyond the physical trauma that they experienced, there are. There are mental complications that most of them and most people miss. And it doesn't matter how smart you are as a human being, if you're a hostage, no matter how smart the hostage is, you fail to understand the power of your brain and what it might do to you. And they feel resilient because they just survived captivity. But that works against them. They want to be defiant. They want to say, oh, I'm never going to let those captors, those bastards, define who I am and what I do. But the truth is, in many times that experience have robbed those hostages from who they were and their career paths, and it sucks. But, like, just, you know, Danny Fencer, we talked about him here on the, on the rescue from Myanmar. He was a journalist in Myanmar. He can never go back to journalism in Myanmar.
- [22:57]
Mike Pesca
That's his expertise. That's his life. That's correct identity.
- [23:01]
Mickey Bergman
Yeah, yeah. And some of these individuals, like, you know, they're all unique, but no matter, as smart as they are, they operate as textbooks if they don't figure it out. And unfortunately, sometimes the result can be deadly. James Foley, you met, you know, you talk to Diane like he was a journalist. He went to Libya. He got kidnapped in Libya. He got rescued in Libya. And he came back and he said defiantly, no, I have the courage. I'm going to continue. I'm not going to let it define me. And he went to Syria, and he unfortunately got executed by isis. Trevor Reid, we talked about him. He came back from Russia. He was a young kid. He didn't have a career before. He's a former Marine. He came back. He was a national hero in the United States, and then America moved on because we have an attention span of a gnat. And then his brain was like, okay, what do I do? Who am I? Like, I'm an American hero. So he went and volunteered in Ukraine to go and fight Russians, and he escaped death. The guy next to him stepped on the landmine. He almost died yeah, I've read reports
- [24:11]
Mike Pesca
that he was injured.
- [24:12]
Mickey Bergman
Yeah, yeah. And then even, I mean, I listened to the brilliant podcast you had with Elizabeth Serkoff.
- [24:19]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I want to.
- [24:19]
Mickey Bergman
Elizabeth, yeah, she came back. She's a brilliant researcher, an analyst and she came back from Iraq after two and a half years and her kidnappers changed the course of her life. How can she, how can she adjust now? What is like how, how does she balance not to lose who she is and who she was as, as a researcher and going on the ground and doing this and yet not allow her brain to get her into dangerous situations in the future? It's, it's such a struggle to say
- [24:49]
Mike Pesca
nothing of the toll on her body, such that she had to take a bit of a walk during our interview. She can't sit down. So here's what I was thinking and
- [24:58]
Mickey Bergman
her and her family who have did like two and a half years, suspended life.
- [25:04]
Mike Pesca
Her sister Emma was your client, right?
- [25:06]
Mickey Bergman
Absolutely. And Emma, like she, the amount of things that she gave up and what she had to do to save her sister, she is running on empty now. She needs to rebuild her life. And, and, and you know, and Elizabeth just came back and she needs more support. She needs to, to look at. And again, she's brilliant. But if she's not careful, you know that the same things that happen, just like any other hostage, the brain is, our brains are very powerful and we need to be so careful of it.
- [25:38]
Mike Pesca
So we do have some extra content for the Mickey Bergman interview and you need to be a Pesca plus subscriber to hear it. Go to subscribe.mike pesca.com youm could also get the show ad free. You right now are also invited if you are a PESKA plus subscriber to join us with the NCAA tournament pool. Yes, you come for the political prisoners. You stay to give us your insights as to Kansas versus Cal Baptist. Now only Pesca plus people can play, but here's a little end around. You can get a free seven day trial right now. We just started that on all our PESCA plus offerings. So try it, join in. It's the best way to support the gist. Unless you want to put a large wager in our name on McNeese State. No, you know what, don't do that. Go to subscribe.mikepeska.com and try Pesca plus and maybe join us filling out your brackets. The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers
- [26:50]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [27:11]
Mike Pesca
And now the spiel. This song, or at least its introduction, might be the most rousing sequence in rock and roll. It's often miscalled Teenage Wasteland because that's the chorus that everyone knows. But the song is Baba O'Reilly. It's by the who. And why does it hit like it does? Because of the build, the looping synth, the layering restraint before release, the drums. Your brains is being wound tighter and tighter. And then Keith Moon arrives.
- [27:39]
Mickey Bergman
Bom.
- [27:42]
Mike Pesca
There's almost nothing that can get this longtime fan of the who not to air drum along with Keith Moon when hearing Bubba O'Reilly. Except a commercial from Burger King. Yes, during the Oscars, I found the answer of what could ruin Baba O'Reilly. It is Burger King. They have done to Baba O'Reilly what they themselves have also done to onion rings.
- [28:02]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
There was a time Burger King used to be King Flame. Grilled burgers served by folks only happy when you had it your way.
- [28:12]
Mike Pesca
The assumption is the American public is upset, not about inflation, war, democratic drift, extra judicial killings, the fact that Amy Madigan just beat Teyana Taylor for best supporting actress. None of these things. No. What's upsetting us all is the indignities being visited upon the Whopper. It was great.
- [28:29]
Burger King Mascot Voice/Character
Take me to Burger King.
- [28:31]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
But somehow, somewhere fast food just fell off.
- [28:35]
Mike Pesca
Nothing happened to fast food. There was no decline in the quality of fast food. Fast food remains what it always was. Ultra processed, salty, fatty. Pretty much perfectly engineered to appeal to us as human animals. What happened is we got a little smarter about fast food.
- [28:52]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
And yet old restaurants, slow service, simple mistakes.
- [28:57]
Mickey Bergman
What is this? This thing is just pitiful.
- [28:59]
Mike Pesca
How am I supposed to eat like a king when you're feeding me like a peasant?
- [29:01]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
And that this guy, definitely.
- [29:03]
Mike Pesca
They actually, in this ad, include customers complaining about Burger King in their own commercial. Ooh, they're being honest. They're leveling with us. It's as if the creative brief was people think we're worse than we used to be. Let's confirm that. But if we said it to Baba O'Reilly, it will solve most of our problems. Maybe they're right. Then again, if Bubble O'Reilly solved problems or elevated all media, we would think much more positively about the following properties that bubble O'Reilly appeared in. The Girl Next Door, Slacker, Summer of Sam, Prefontaine, Fever Pitch, the trailer for American Beauty, Dawson's Creek, Mazda ads, T Mobile ads, Cisco ads. But this is the first use of Baba O'Reilly to underscore customers complaints. Then there is this guy.
- [29:46]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
Hi, I'm Tom, the president and this is what you called us out on.
- [29:50]
Mike Pesca
That is Tom Curtis, Burger King president, who seems to believe the public wakes up each morning thinking about Burger King, asking, how do I save Burger King? So let me say this, by the way, I'm not looking down at Burger King. Growing up, my family ate fast food and mostly Burger King. Actually we won some sort of contest at Roy Rogers. Remember that place? Free burgers for a month. So that got us hooked there. But Burger King was what all fast food is. It was cheap, it was easy. We had maybe a perception that it was better than it was. My mother worked since the time I was four or five as a teacher and making home cooked meals was not always possible. And given her talent with a spatula advisable by the way, she has since then become a wonderful, wonderful order of Costco lasagnas enchiladas. But in any case, Burger King was seen as slightly more healthy in my family than McDonald's. I do think it was the marketing, in fact, flame broiled, have it your way, etc. So back in the 70s, when who's next had just charted, Burger King marketing was doing something positive, including not denigrating the whole brand and its history. Burger King also had a royal court of its own. Mayor McCheese was on notice. They had Sir Shakes a Lot.
- [31:07]
Burger King Mascot Voice/Character
Who's that kid?
- [31:09]
Mike Pesca
Meet Sir Shake A Lot.
- [31:10]
Burger King Mascot Voice/Character
Sir Shake a Lot. My name. Drinking shakes is my game.
- [31:14]
Mike Pesca
When shake a lot. Thirsty. He loves a good shake. It's so cold and frosty it makes him quake.
- [31:19]
Burger King Mascot Voice/Character
Great shakes.
- [31:20]
Mike Pesca
Burger King who experienced tremors while serving frosty beverages. This isn't mockery. Watch the old videos. The guy is just like having a sort of fit in the corner. And then they have some robots selling french fries.
- [31:33]
Burger King Mascot Voice/Character
Wizard of Fries. He can do anything with Burger King fries. He's a Fry school graduate.
- [31:39]
Mike Pesca
Anyway, obviously that didn't work. So now the strategy is to mock the old mascot and that this guy
- [31:46]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
definitely wasn't helping any of it. Which.
- [31:48]
Mike Pesca
Fair point.
- [31:49]
Burger King President (Tom Curtis)
So we fired the king and crowned you.
- [31:53]
Mike Pesca
If you couldn't tell the Burger King head honcho was mocking the old Burger King mascot, who for years would run onto a football field in Burger King commercials. And in 2017, not too long ago, was right in the middle of Burger King marketing being named Creative Marketer of the Year. By the Con Lyons International Festival of Creativity. So it worked for a while until it didn't. Now he's taken out back and shot his prodigious head. Look, the problem isn't that the mascot didn't work, it's that Burger King didn't work. And the mascot was associated with a less than quality hamburger brand. And now the CEO of Burger King, who wears that button down blue oxford shirt as he bites into a burger just like the CEO of McDonald's did in a video that went viral last week, has figured out the best thing to reposition his company is by taking it out on the old mascot. I don't know if he was beloved, I don't know if people thought he was creepy, but they. But in 10 years there's going to be in corporate headquarters a history of our marketing and he will have a place of prominence. This is a sad, sad period for that old Burger King mascot. The King. People will not, I predict, begin thinking fondly of Burger King because the corporate board is now wearing a lot of button down blue shirts while talking about their product. It's as if Burger King is a political party that has broken faith with the American people. But people do not believe in Burger King because fast foods and ultra processed foods are out. It's that they're culturally a little out of step where people think they should be eating. It's not that people actually are eating better, it's that they kind of demand the word organic or maybe even high protein stamped on the side of their products. So here is the advice. Not to Burger King, but to us all. Don't buy the rebrand. Don't buy the self aware complaining. Don't buy the button down sincerity. Buy into instead. A different song by the who won't get fooled again. That's it for today's show. Corey War produces the Gist. Michelle Pesca is now showing up second in the credits. I mean, she's first in our hearts, isn't she my heart? Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist list. Jeff Craig edits the how to program and also does a lot of video for us. And Ben Astaire books the program. Thanks for listening.