Vegetarians Have a Beef With Ads for Carl’s Jr.

Woe is beef.

Carl’s Jr., the fast-food chain whose in-your-face broadcast ads instruct hamburger eaters how to munch their meat in front of vegetarians, now has a “holy war” on its hands.

A militant vegetarian group, known as Justice Through Insurrection by Humans for Animal Defense, or JIHAD, which means “holy war” in Arabic, occupied the chain’s flagship store in Anaheim last week to protest the company’s controversial “Eat Meat” advertising campaign.

Clad like terrorists, with black ski masks or bandannas over their faces and sporting T-shirts smeared with red paint to resemble blood, a dozen or more young JIHAD members hopped onto counters, unfurled anti-meat posters and disrupted business at the restaurant for about 45 minutes as nervous patrons looked on.

The protest, JIHAD leaders said, was payback for Carl’s taunting radio spots, especially the one proclaiming that “vegetarians will get over it.”

“Carl’s is ridiculing the ideology of millions of people who don’t eat meat,” said Damon Knight, JIHAD’s 27-year-old leader. “We will continue fighting against them until we get an apology. . . . If [they don’t], we will be a thorn in their side forever.”

The fast-food chain acknowledges that in the cluttered world of broadcast advertising, it has to push the limits of good taste to catch customers’ attention and whet their appetites. But such advertising can also provide fodder for protest campaigns that can become a public relations nightmare for some corporations.

For the moment, however, officials with Carl’s Jr. say they won’t be, well, cowed.

“We’re not even considering pulling the ad,” spokeswoman Suzi Brown said, acknowledging that the company had previously withdrawn offensive ads featuring basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman and another bloody one spoofing Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery House.

The current ad that JIHAD finds offensive is part of Carl’s Jr.’s highly successful marketing campaign that revolves around the slogan, “If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face.”

The ads extol the virtues of sinking one’s teeth into a giant, succulent but messy hamburger.

One ad depicts a group of young men leering through binoculars and betting that a bosomy woman eating a burger would spill catsup on her white dress.

These ads, the company spokeswoman says, are meant to appeal to the chain’s most loyal customers, young men ages 18 to 34.

“To get these young men’s attention,” Brown said, the company must resort to titillating ads.

“Judging from the responses we’ve received, our entire campaign pushes the envelope,” Brown said. “Our intent was never to offend anybody but to entertain. Overall, the ads achieve that goal.”

For confirmation, just ask any of the chain’s shareholders.

Since ads featuring the company’s grandfatherly founder, Carl N. Karcher Jr., were replaced by the hipper new TV and radio spots, sales in Carl’s 714 outlets have posted gains for 11 consecutive quarters.

The ad that spurred some vegetarians into action urges burger eaters to “tear into that big, juicy Super Star [burger] and let the sauce dribble down your chin. And remember when it’s all gone, you must smile politely and [slurp].”

At one point, the announcer says, “Those vegetarians will get over it. Just don’t let ‘em make you feel guilty, OK?”

One morning last year, JIHAD’s Knight was at his Minerva Street home, listening to Howard Stern’s talk show, when the offending ad squawked through his radio. “It just wasn’t funny,” Knight said.

But the ad was a godsend for Knight, who, with his vegan friends, had been looking for a protest target.

“Since everyone hates McDonald’s and protests against them, why not Carl’s?”

A few months before the offending ad hit the airwaves, Knight and Shane Irvin, his best friend and former classmate at Anaheim’s Gilbert High, had founded JIHAD after deciding that local animal rights groups were not militant enough.

Both know a thing or two about militant struggle.

Last July, the two friends spent 18 hours in jail after dumping a truckload of used kitty litter at a Boys Town USA research hospital in Lake Forest to protest alleged kitten abuse.

They eventually pleaded guilty to littering and performed 24 hours of community service at a Los Angeles soup kitchen that serves vegan meals to the homeless.

“We’re the most hated animal rights group around,” Knight said with a sense of pride as he stroked Lorenna, his orange-and-white cat, during a recent interview.

Like Knight, the two dozen other members of JIHAD are vegans, vegetarians whose dietary rules are so strict that animal products such as eggs, butter and cheese will not pass their lips. They also shun leather shoes and belts.

When JIHAD decided to take on Carl’s Jr., Knight fired off a missive to the firm’s corporate headquarters. Withdraw the ad, apologize and begin serving a vegetarian alternative “like the veggie burgers McDonald’s serves in India,” Knight demanded.

When company officials didn’t cave in to their demands, about 45 JIHAD supporters last summer stormed the restaurant in front of the firm’s corporate headquarters near Romneya Drive and Harbor Boulevard.

The invasion was repeated last week, when Knight and Irvin spearheaded an assault by a dozen protesters at the same store.

Irvin says JIHAD will continue to wage guerrilla-style raids against Carl’s Jr. until it meets the group’s demands, one of which may soon be satisfied purely by happenstance.

This summer, the ads are scheduled to be replaced by new spots featuring the company’s How-to-Eat-Meat-Man, who Brown promises will be a kinder, gentler character who will poke fun at himself, not vegetarians.

But Knight may have yet another war of words on his hands.

Haitham Bundakji, chairman of the Islamic Society of Orange County, said some Muslims may be offended that “jihad,” which is used in a sacred context in the Koran, is being misused by the group.

And if that is the case, Bundakji said, the Muslims will have to launch their own protest.