Carl's Jr. & Hardee's
Spending a decade creating simultaneously famous (and infamous) work for Carl's Jr. and their Mid-West & East Coast sister Hardee's, across two different agencies, makes picking a few favorites near impossible. Here goes...
The Carl's Jr. & Hardee's brands, like most QSR's (Quick Service Restaurants) rely on a strategy of promoting LTO's (Limited Time Offerings) to drive interest in new, unique product innovations/flavors, each with a full Digital/Social/Broadcast campaign to support it, as well as creating their rewards App from the ground up and building relationships with the hundreds of Franchisee owners across the globe.
7+ Billion dollars in earned media impressions over a decade, and hundreds of millions of organic views.
Social, Digital & Experiential
In addition to running Carl's Jr. and Hardee's always on social channels, and helping to build their rewards app from the ground up, each of our LTO campaigns had surrounding Digital, Social & Experiential stunts allowing us to create 8-10 fully integrated campaigns per year (times the 10+ years I ran the accounts). From creating All Natural coupons and totes that biodegrade and turn into seeds, to putting a $6000 combo meal on the Palm's Casino room service menu, to Xmen'ifying thousands of our fans, to creating a hidden healthier menu found on the other side of our website, to inviting fans to wear a Spiderman costume in store for a free burger and having the late, great Stan Lee critique their costumes in real time, to partnering with Call of Duty to create in-game exclusive rewards, to giving one lucky (crazy) fan lifetime burgers for getting our temporary tattoo, actually tattooed on their body.
Hunger Campaign
After an initial product launch, sales would decline naturally over the next few weeks as the 'new news' wore off.
To keep sales and combat the decline we created a parallel campaign of up close and personal eating (total appetite appeal) spots, dubbed "The Hunger Campaign". I prototyped the start of the campaign in my garage, then after the campaign was sold, went on to Direct the majority of the spots, along with all of the Carl's Jr. & Hardee's food shoots.
The Earned Media Elephant in the room
In the immortal words of Adam Yauch (Beastie Boy's MCA), "I'd rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever."
So yes, I was responsible (along with a team of many different talented women and men) for the Carl's Jr. work of yesteryear.
And while this work, while always based in fantasy, always polarizing, and always leading to monumental sales figures, is not where I am, or the world is, now.
Rather than hide from it, I'd rather acknowledge its earned media value at the time–over 7+ Billion, with a 'B', earned media impressions–and learn from it today.
