Carl’s Jr. dumps its sexy ads as McDonald’s bets on fresh beef

Fast-food burger chains Carl’s Jr. and McDonald’s are getting back to the basics: hamburgers.

Carl’s Jr. and its sibling, Hardee’s, rolled out a new advertisement Wednesday branding themselves as “pioneers of the great American burger.” And on Thursday, McDonald’s announced that it would switch to fresh beef from frozen beef in Quarter Pounders at a majority of its U.S. restaurants.

For more than a decade, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s have distinguished themselves with ads that featured scantily clad models and celebrities eating dripping hamburgers. On Wednesday, they launched a campaign that specifically eschews the old ads and positions the company as a food innovator.

The new commercial spot, produced by advertising agency 72andSunny, introduces the fictional Carl Hardee Sr., who has returned to reclaim the brand from his son, Carl Hardee Jr., a goofball, partying type who had taken the leadership role and run amok. The video shows Carl Sr. returning to headquarters, tearing down huge pictures of swimsuit models and replacing them with framed portraits of hamburgers.

The company’s racy ad campaign was championed by CKE Restaurant Holdings Chief Executive Andrew Puzder, who served in the top job for 16 years before announcing his resignation last week. Puzder had been nominated to serve as President Trump’s Labor secretary but withdrew from consideration in February.

“While those provocative ads generated a lot of buzz for our brands … it was very difficult for that kind of an ad to tell a more comprehensive story about the long list of things we do to make better food than anyone else in our space,” Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for CKE, said in a news release. CKE is the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. (CKE was formerly headquartered in Carpinteria, Calif., but completed a move to Franklin, Tenn., this month.)

John Stanton, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said the “sexist” advertisements are out of place in today’s world. “That strategy did not have enough total appeal,” Stanton said.

In addition, Stanton said, fast-food companies couldn’t ignore that Americans’ preferences have shifted away from processed foods and toward more fresh food and high-quality ingredients.

McDonald’s, the world’s largest hamburger chain, has already taken some steps in this direction. It has added cage-free eggs to its menu, removed artificial preservatives from Chicken McNuggets and done away with high fructose corn syrup in its buns.

Now it plans to offer fresh beef at most of its 14,000 U.S. locations, with the exception of restaurants in Alaska and Hawaii and at some airport locations. By the middle of 2018, customers who order a Quarter Pounder can expect to have an employee cook up a fresh beef patty on a grill.

“Today’s announcement is part of a continuing food journey for McDonald’s,” McDonald’s USA President Chris Kempczinski said in a news release. “We’re just getting started.”

Pushed by its franchisees, McDonald’s Corp., based in Oak Brook, Ill., tested the fresh beef Quarter Pounders at more than 400 restaurants in Dallas and Tulsa, Okla., for about a year before rolling out the changes nationally.

The company has faced stiff competition from traditional fast-food rivals such as Wendy’s, which touts its fresh beef patties, as well as fast-casual hamburger restaurants such as In-N-Out Burger and Shake Shack. Last year, McDonald’s revenue fell for the fourth year in a row.

“McDonald’s has always argued, ‘Well, we’re super-convenient,’” Stanton said. “But now the company is asking, ‘How do we get people that actually want a hamburger to come in?’”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

nina.agrawal@latimes.com

Twitter: @AgrawalNina

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