Restaurant marketing these days has turned into a bawdy business. Everywhere you turn, it’s in one innuendo and out the other.
From Carl’s Jr.’s “Hot Chicks Eating Burgers” campaign to the monumental billboards of casual-dining chain Twin Peaks—and many pulled-out-stops in between—restaurants are turning to sex to sell.
Restaurant marketers have to walk the fine line of finesse, because they can quickly turn off as many or more customers than they turn on—literally and figuratively.
Informal arbiters of taste and decorum have had much to raise their eyebrows over as of late, even if they are far from the prudish-Puritan sorts.
Of course, this is nothing new. Retailers for years have titillated with their advertising to gain market share. Remember the Brooke Shield’s “nothing-comes-between-me-and-my-Calvins” advertising of the 1980s? That set the jeans-maker Calvin Klein apart from the fray.
Today, it’s not just one chain but many that are trying to grab the attention with a little sexy talk.
Carl’s Jr., which several years ago featured a then-less-exposed Paris Hilton, has employed lightly clad actress Audrina Partridge to devour a teriyaki burger on the beach, accessed 24/7 on the Internet. Hardee’s set up a
Even the often-breathless media releases tend toward heavy breathing, as in the case of the French maids: “To celebrate this delicious new meat-on-meat creation, Hardee’s is sending four gorgeous French maids—Sophie, Antoinette, Gabrielle and Isabelle—to cruise the country on Seg-ways. These beauties may not be the kind to make things perfectly clean, but they’ll definitely cook up some appetites.”
Brad Haley, Hardee’s executive vice president of marketing, went on to say: “Our loyal fans not only love Hardee’s food, they enjoy the beautiful women who have starred in our commercials over the years. So, we decided to take it one step further and send some French maids across the country.”
On the other hand, some criticism has been volleyed at Quiznos’ ads for its Toasty Torpedo sandwich, in which a red-hot oven asks a clueless staffer to “put it in me.” That just goes to show: No one ever set a standard that these ads had to be sophisticated.
The message that does stick in the consumers’ minds can and should be “edgy.” But sometimes many of those consumers think it goes over the edge.
In the Internet age, it only takes minutes for even isolated marketing efforts, such as Burger King’s Singapore-only print ad of a gape-mouthed, red-lipped lass and a 7-inch sandwich and the headline “It’ll Blow Your Mind Away” to spin its way around the globe and raise hackles in regions that in the past wouldn’t have seen it in a month of Sundays.
An internal memo credited to Russ Klein, Burger King’s chief marketing officer, recently conceded that some of that chain’s ads had ventured into dangerous territory. The memo said the perceptions that some of Burger King’s ads contained “gratuitous or offensive use of sexual innuendo” had “inadvertently reflected negatively on the brand.”
It said advertising in the future would be “managed more conservatively with a keen sensitivity.”
The sex battle isn’t just being waged in the quick-service category, as the casual-dining segment has it’s own stimulus package going on.
The granddaddy of restaurant concepts with female waitstaffs, Hooters, has been seeing a growing number of competitors successfully engage them in the lure for the customer. Concepts as varied as Tilted Kilt, Twin Peaks, Bone Daddy’s and Brick House are enjoying success in the “breast-aurant” category.
This all seems to be an aberration of economics, especially the so-called “Hemline Theory.” In 1926, Wharton economist George Taylor theorized that in good times hemlines rise—such as the mini skirt in the 1960s—and in bad economic times they fall.
But as a battle-hardened female baker opined recently: “Sex sells.” That’s a given.
However, restaurant chains and the people who market them just have to make sure they don’t over-sell the sex and underestimate their patrons’ sensibilities. The race for the bottom line can only be so racy. — rruggles@nrn.com
