NRN editor and restaurant marketing expert Jennings breaks down what you should be watching in the industry this week. Connect with her on the latest marketing trends and news at @livetodineout and [email protected]. RELATED: • Subway touts healthful sandwiches for fall • Subway quietly tests mobile ordering, payment • More restaurant marketing news
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The marketing team behind Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s knows their target audience of “young, hungry men” will never get enough of spokesmodels in skimpy dress washing cars while eating burgers.
Their latest ad may prove that fundamental point.
Enter Carl Brutananadilewski, the balding-but-otherwise-furry animated character from the series “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” who is taking on the spokesmodel role in the chain’s latest ad airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim cable network.
Brutananadilewski wears a leopard-skin banana hammock and drips sauce on his ample, tee-shirt-tanned flesh, slapping his jiggling posterior to emphasize the chain’s Fresh Baked Buns.
Steve Lemley, senior vice president of field marketing and media at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, admits Brutananadilewski is “not beautiful in the traditional way,” but he “brings a certain willingness to the role and a unique interpretation of Fresh Baked Buns.”
The equal-opportunity spot was written and produced by "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" creators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro, along with ad agency 72andSunny, which has long worked with Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s parent CKE Restaurants Holdings Inc.
The agency is responsible for this year’s “I Love Texas” spot, which gave reference — some might say homage — to the original Paris Hilton car wash ad in 2005, created by creative agency Mendelsohn Zien.
CKE’s practice of using sex to get attention has been criticized by groups like the Parents Television Council, which has described the Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s commercials as nothing but a sleazy attempt to make money selling burgers with “pornography.”
The animated parody may do little to appease such complaints. After all, kids watch Adult Swim too.
But does this version indicate an end to CKE’s suggestive selling practices? I doubt it.
If anything, CKE’s willingness to poke fun at its reputation only cements its position as a brand that has created a significant body of work in the sexy spokesmodel oeuvre.
Let’s face it: A half-naked Carl Brutananadilewski writhing on the hood of a Dodge Spyder is hard to top.
Contact Lisa Jennings at [email protected].
Follow her on Twitter: @livetodineout
