Carl’s Jr. Execs Yank Rodman TV Ads, Again
One day after being dropped from the Los Angeles Lakers, controversial basketball star Dennis Rodman has also been dumped as a pitchman by Carl’s Jr., officials at the Anaheim-based fast-food company said Friday.
This is the third time commercials featuring Rodman hawking the chain’s messy Super Star hamburgers have been yanked from the airwaves because of his unpredictable on- and off-court antics.
“The reason we were using him again is because he was a Laker,” said Suzy Brown, spokeswoman for CKE Restaurants, which owns Carl’s Jr. “He’s no longer a Laker so we’ll no longer use him.”
Rodman spokesman Matt LaBov declined to comment.
The company resumed airing the 60-, 30- and 10-second spots less than two weeks ago and had planned to run them throughout the NBA season, which ends in June.
Although financial details of the recent deal were not disclosed, Brown said the contract was based on the number of games Rodman played and included a provision that Rodman would no longer get paid if he was dropped or quit the team.
“We knew the risks involved, which is why we set up the contract the way that we did,” Brown said. “If Rodman didn’t play for any reason other than injury, we didn’t have to pay him.”
The commercials featured Rodman in a tattoo parlor. He bites into a Super Star burger that drips onto his arm and causes one of his numerous tattoos to come to life.
The tattoo is of a muscleman in a tank top who snatches the burger out of Rodman’s hand and eats it. When the former Chicago Bull rebounding star reaches over to look for his missing burger, a red-and-yellow Carl’s Jr. logo dyed onto the top of his head is revealed.
But it’s been a rocky relationship between Carl’s Jr. and Rodman ever since he filmed the commercial for the company more than two years ago. The company initially pulled the ads in January 1997 after Rodman kicked a cameraman who was shooting an NBA game. The television spots resumed but were taken off the airwaves again when Rodman made expletive-laced comments about Mormons while the Chicago Bulls were in Utah to play the Jazz in the NBA finals that year.
Brown said it is impossible to determine how much the Rodman ads affected sales “since it was such a short amount of time and we have several other spots running simultaneously.”
Despite it all, Carl’s Jr. is not ruling out using Rodman’s commercials in the future should his professional situation improve.
“If the Lakers change their minds and reinstate him, there would always be that chance that we’d run the ads again,” Brown said.