Carl’s Jr. Drops Its Drippy Mystery House TV Ad
Carl’s Jr., the “in-your-face” hamburger chain, on Monday said it was dropping an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired television commercial after hundreds of consumers complained it was needlessly graphic.
The so-called Mystery House commercial, which led viewers to believe that they were seeing a blood-stained hand and evidence of foul play, ends with an actor asking for half of a drippy, catsup-laden burger.
Executives of CKE Restaurants Inc. on Monday decided to drop the commercial that had been scheduled to run for at least another week.
Some consumers mistook the purposely scary ad as a preview for an upcoming horror film while others complained the commercial was simply in bad taste.
The advertisement marked the second time that Mendelsohn/Zien Advertising, a Santa Monica-based advertising agency, has crafted a controversial advertisement for a Southland company.
In March, the agency created a small uproar with a racy ad for Clothestime Inc., the Anaheim-based junior women’s wear chain. Clothestime executives used the networks’ decision not to run the advertisement as grist for a follow-up series of advertisements.
The agency subsequently completed a series of racy ads for Clothestime, including one that uses a cross-dressing man to showcase the company’s apparel.
But agency President Richard Zien denied that the Mystery House commercial was designed to be controversial.
“No matter what we say or do, we’re always going to offend some people because we’re trying to entertain people--to keep them from flicking that [channel changer] in their hands.”
Zien and Suzanne Brown, a spokeswoman for CKE, said few of the complaints fielded came from viewers in the chain’s targeted age group--males between the ages of 18 and 35 who buy most of the nation’s fast food. In fact, Zien said, consumer research showed a strong, positive response from that group.
Zien described the six commercials in the burger chain’s ongoing “in your face” campaign as “a huge success story . . . there’s been a phenomenal turnaround at Carl’s Jr. . . . and while advertising doesn’t get all of the credit, this campaign has clearly driven sales and profit.”
Carl’s Jr. and the Mendelsohn/Zien agency say they will remain in consumers faces.
They’re now scrambling to complete a new TV advertisement featuring controversial NBA star Dennis Rodman that will run during the upcoming NBA championship series.
“The Dennis Rodman commercial is in keeping with our ‘if it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face’ campaign,” Zien said. “It’s going to be very entertaining.”
