Washington - For a dozen years, Carl's Jr. and Hardee's
have been best known for their racy - and often crass - commercials featuring
scantily-clad women with the occasional hamburger.
Now the fast-food chains are trying to reverse course.
Their new message, according to a new commercial: "Food, not boobs."
Their newest ad, a 3-minute spot scheduled to air Sunday
on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on Sunday, attempts to dial back the
raunchiness. In it, the fictional Carl Hardee Sr. - played by
"Nashville" actor Charles Esten - shows up to reclaim the company
from his son, Carl Hardee Jr. (also fictional, played by the comedian Drew
Tarver).
"Take that down," the older Hardee says,
motioning to a giant portrait of Charlotte McKinney holding hamburgers against
her bare bosom. The picture is replaced by a close-up of a hamburger.
Then Carl Hardee Sr. turns to the camera. "Hello,
friend," he says. "You know, when I started this company, it was
about one thing: Pioneering a new way of food."
A 60-second version of the ad, created by the advertising
agency 72andSunny, will run during the NCAA championship game next week.
"It was time to evolve," said Jason Norcross,
executive creative director and partner of Los Angeles-based 72andSunny.
"It was time to change. Those ads just weren't driving business as they
once did."
The idea, Norcross said, was to help the company compete
against newcomers like Shake Shack and the Habit Burger Grill. While Carl's Jr.
and Hardee's ads certainly drummed up publicity for the brands, Norcross said
they weren't exactly driving business anymore -- not even among long-time
customers, who tend to be "young, hungry guys."
"The reality is, they became infamous for their
advertising," Norcross said. "Beyond that, people didn't really know
anything about them. We wanted to put the focus back on their products."
Can’t ignore
But, he added, it didn't seem right to just ignore the
company's past.
"We couldn't just go from being the provocative
brand to the boring brand," Norcross said. "We tried to take a
self-aware approach and acknowledge the reputation they've had over the years."
CKE Restaurants, the California-based parent company of
Carl's and Hardee's, was until earlier this month led by Andrew Puzder,
President Donald Trump's original nominee to lead the Labour Department.
Although the two chains share the same advertising and largely offer the same
foods, Carl's Jr. locations tend to be in the western US, while Hardee's are in
the Midwest and Southeast.
Company executives said the racy ads didn't have the
impact that they once did.
"You and I certainly may like the ads we've been
running," Puzder, 66, told Stuart Varney on Fox Business on Thursday. But
"young, hungry guys aren't as affected by the racy ads with the swimsuit
models because you can get a lot of that on the internet now. It's not like it
was 10, 12 years ago when we started this. Young guys today, the millennial
young guys, are concerned with, where do you source your beef? What kind of
cooking system do you have?"
The company's racy commercials began in 2005, with a
minute-long ad starring Paris Hilton in a skimpy bathing suit and high heels.
She seductively scrubs a Bentley, climbs up onto its hood and later crawl
across the sudsy floor on all fours to take a bite of a Carl's Jr. burger. The
spicy barbecue burger is on screen for all of 3 seconds during the 60 second
ad, which was banned before it even appeared on television.
A number of other women, including Kate Upton, Heidi Klum
and Kim Kardashian have also starred in the company's racy ads. Between them,
they have chowed down the company's burgers in negligees and leather bikinis,
and eaten salads in beds and in bubble baths.
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"Perhaps you've noticed that Carl's Jr. is not
exactly trying to market towards the ladies quite as much as they try to market
on them," a blogger for the women's site Jezebel wrote said in 2013.
Puzder, who withdrew his nomination to become Labor
Secretary in February after footage surfaced of his ex-wife saying he had
physically abused her, recently defended the company's provocative ads.
"I think that any grocery store you go into, or drug
stores you're going to see on magazine covers things that are more revealing
than you saw in many of our ads," he told Fox Business this month.
"We saved the company with those ads. We saved a lot of jobs."
But not even all of that bare skin could shore up sales
at the company, which is owned by private-equity firm Roark Capital Group. A
"The emphasise has always been on young, hungry
guys, but it was time to broaden the spectrum," Norcross said.
"Hopefully this will help."