StreetVerse

Why Carl’s Jr. Is a Bad Investment (Part II: Advertisements)

Posted By: The Rational Investor
Filed Under: Finance, Food, Opinion on March 25, 2010

For those just joining, you can catch up by reading the Introduction and Part I: Menu.  In a nutshell, Wendy’s is planning on buying Carl’s Jr. parent company and I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not only are they stepping on their own toes by owning a company that directly competes with their underlying business model, but Carl’s Jr. is not a good business to own. I’ve already tackled how the menu is misogynistic and self-defeating, now I’ll cover how their ads are misogynistic and self-defeating.

In the book Made to Stick (that I highly recommend to anyone that wants to get their message across and have people talking about it the next day) the authors come up with 6 different elements that they routinely see in SUCCESsful marketing.  Did you think I emphasized one letter too few when I bolded SUCCESsful? Well, no I didn’t. For some reason, the authors were too lazy to come up with an extra S in their acronym.  Their acronym is SUCCES with the last S left out.  Each letter stands for the following:

• S -- Simple.  People have a hard time dealing with abstract ideas in short messages. Make sure the message is easy to understand.
• U -- Unexpected.  Play with the audience’s primal insticts and surprise them.  It’s very important not to use a cliché in this category. Think man on horse for the Old Spice commercial and how well that did.
• C -- Concrete. This is sort of a subcategory of simple. Make sure the audience can relate to the message.
• C -- Credibility. Make sure the audience can envision themselves in that situation.
• E -- Emotion. Make sure the audience knows why they should care about your message.
• S -- Stories. Narrative. Narrative. Narrative. Humans are wired to remember stories and connect with them.

Think about how well Aesop’s fables have done. They’ve stuck around because they’re great narratives with simple messages.  Every human can relate to them and picture themselves as the tortoise, the ant or the fox.  The unexpected may happen in some of his fables, like a hare losing to a tortoise in a race. Yeah, it sounds silly to be unexpected, but you gotta think of the time period. Back then people didn’t know what whales looked like, so they drew them with a fish body and pig head (I’m not making this up). It was easy to surprise them.

So let’s take a look at a few of Carl’s latest ads and evaluate how well they do against the SUCCES criteria:

Boring. Unfortunately, the cliched joke on snuggies is going to last for a long time. Probably as long as that Dick Cheney shooting someone joke. The message of comfort food and the snuggie was subtle and not concrete. In terms of the unexpected, I really wanted Jack in the Box to come out of nowhere, rip the snuggie off of him and strangle the mf with it.

The punchline didn’t work for two reasons. First hardly anyone orders a grilled cheese when they go to a diner or fast food restaurant so no one can relate to the main character’s predicament. Therefore it fails the two C’s. Two, the grilled cheese sangwhich (new yorker for sandwich) isn’t a grilled cheese sangwhich, it’s a fuckin burger so no one can relate to the joke.  At least it has somewhat of a narrative.

This one is a bit better. We have the unexpected burgers talking to each other. It’s simple: Carl’s gives more meat, less bread, and better value as a burger. It plays to my emotions as it’s a goddamn juicy burger. However, there’s nothing really sticky about it other than that. I’ll forget about Carl’s Jr once I see steaks advertised for $3.50/lb. in the Henry’s newspaper ad.

Plays to my emotions well and Kim Kardashian sticks in my mind for the next three minutes. After the testosterone spike subsides, I ask myself, what was the commercial for again? Salads. Girls like salads, guys hate salads. Guys like Kim Kardashian, girls hate Kim Kardashian. None of the SUCCES criteria is met with this advertisement. It’s playing to male sex emotion, but selling the sex and not the product.  This is not going to bring women running into Carl’s wanting a taste of the salad, it’s going to send boys to Google Images searching under they keywords “Kim Kardashian Playboy.” Whoever was in charge of producing this commercial would be fired the next day if I were running Carl’s. This is just more evidence that Carl’s continues to target their base instead of reaching out for newer markets (people who actually eat salad and care if they have a gut).

Western Bacon cheeseburger and Padma Lakshmi? What’s the connection. How do I relate to this other than the obvious sexual cliches (seriously how many times are they going to show a burger jizzing all over girls?).  The message is way too complex. Why am I going to eat a burger that jizzes on me for? Carl’s Jr is fast food, there’s no culinary experience needed to determine if the burger is good or not.  The story was good I guess, but it’s hard for me to believe that a culinary expert that slept with THIS GUY in a long term relationship is a total freak.  Credibility fail. To me a perfect target for this burger would’ve been old people. They love things that are gourmet, bacon and Texas (or Nebraska).  Look how well Omaha steaks have done thanks to old people loving Nebraska so much.  Stop focusing everything on horny college kids Carl’s, they have no money.

Carl’s needs to take a lesson from the way Jack in the box has rebranded itself.  Its advertisement campaigns have been extremely solid in terms of SUCCES.  The menu coincides with the quirkiness and memorable moments of its ads.  Bowl haircuts, teriyaki bowls. Mini cattle, mini cowboys, mini sirloin burgers.  Just look at how fucking catchy this fucking commercial is:

This is one of my favorite Jack commercials. Simple/Concrete -- We have a new product that offers a different and tastier cut of the cow than the competitor. Credible -- It was so believable that Carl’s Jr ended up suing Jack for making people think angus came from the anus of a cow. Don’t believe me? Here’s the link to prove. Unexpected -- we’re led to believe that angus comes from the anus of a cow. Emotion is lacking but they do mention that ’sirloin needs to be tasted to be believed.’ The narrative is that there’s a new burger that’s never been made before. I still remember this commercial after 4 years because it did so well at taking a shot at Carl’s, Burger Tang (*wink* to my hippy ice cream eating niece) and WacDonald’s angus burgers. I ate sirloin burgers literally for 3 months straight. The message still sticks with me today.

WHAT’S GOOD BURGER KING?! Simple/Concrete -- BK says have it your way but you can’t if its not on their menu all day every day. Credible -- Jack specifies that HIS menu is available all day every day so he’s the only one that let’s you have it your way. Unexpected -- Homeboy rips his arms off and you’re expecting some chicken arms to be behind that corporate facade. NOPE! Jack breaks out arms big enough to compete with Hogan’s twin pythons and says bring it BK. Also, that subtle airquote for “competitor” while he’s walking is da illest. BK sucks and Jack knows it. Emotional -- Fear I guess? I wouldn’t fuck with Jack. Story -- He’s just taking a casual stroll down the block and talking shit about BK, something I can totally relate to. Stuck.

THAT’s how you target to an extensive demographic. While the target is obviously the spanish speaking world, this shit hits all the sticky criteria for anglos alike. Simple -- I know the product because it’s in the jingle. Unexpected -- there’s midgets everywhere, hugging black people, and dancing with the spanish speaking game show hosts. Concrete -- Midgets are mini, like the sangwich. Hell they even call it a sangwich for a new yorker to relate. Credibility -- the midget plays the tuba. Emotion -- the whole commercial is fun and makes me want to dance at the next quincinera while eating these things. Story -- the story is weaved into the music and the dance. Even though 70% of anglo people have no idea what the lyrics translate to, let alone like mariachi music, they understand the story is about a mini buffalo ranch chix sangwich. How sticky is this fucking commercial? I bet you’ve already replayed it several times by now. Women, kids, whites, blacks, horny college students can all eat el mini buffahlow ranch ahora.

Clear winner: Jack in the box. Their commercials are far stickier and reach out to a broader audience. Reaching out to a broader audience means bigger market, bigger market means bigger growth and a better performing company over the long term.

Jack is in the lead 2-0 over Carl’s in terms of investment criteria. There’s only one more left and really the be all end all when it comes to investing in anything. Financials.

About the Author

The Rational Investor whirlwinds through streetverse at a crazy rate. He holds a G.E.D. in Illness.