As the price of Super Bowl ads rises — with 30-second spots reportedly going for more than $8 million earlier this year — brands continue to find new ways to tap into attention around the big game without paying to be in it, including by focusing on the post-game Monday.
Fast-food chain Carl’s Jr. this year iterated on a Free Burger Day concept from 2024 by offering free Hangover Burgers on a day it rechristened National Hangover Day. Key to Carl’s Jr.’s Super Bowl-adjacent campaign was social media star Alix Earle, who starred in a spot that nodded to the racy ads the chain was known for in the 2000s and 2010s.
The partnership was one of the top-performing campaigns that ran in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, with an Instagram post that notched a 47% engagement rate and helped the brand secure a 91% increase in followers, per Metricool social data shared with Marketing Dive.
“We didn't have a spot in the Super Bowl, but we had so much buzz on social media, between the free giveaway and the campaign itself,” said Kara Gasbarro, vice president of creative strategy at Carl’s Jr. parent CKE Restaurants. “It was a nice fit for us to reintroduce Carl's Jr. to a younger audience.”
Carl’s Jr. has worked to build on the success of the National Hangover Day campaign by iterating on its partnership with Earle, an influencer with 7.5 million TikTok followers who has also linked with brands like Poppi, Pantene and Hawaiian Tropic for a series of efforts. Beyond her reach and increased profile, Earle presented an opportunity for the chain to pair with an ambassador as bold and audacious as its menu offerings.
“We met Alix where she was, as far as being authentic,” Gasbarro said. “That was really important to us with audiences, especially a very social-forward, young audience … you want the content to feel fun and buzz-worthy, but you want it to feel real… what she would say, and how she would say it.”
Cheesy nostalgia
The chain in May hosted Club Carl's, turning a Los Angeles location into a one-night-only after-hours party (an opportunity for the brand to capture content) featuring Earle, a DJ and a chance to craft a personalized Build Your Own Bag value offering. Earlier this month, Carl’s Jr. teamed with Earle again as part of a “Kay So?” campaign that promotes a Queso Crunch Burger that features cheese sauce and tortilla strips.
In the spot, Earle enjoys a night at a club where everything she sees — from shot glasses, to going-out tops, to lip gloss — is made of queso. Eventually, Earle heads to a drive-thru to satisfy her craving, and as she takes a bite of the burger, Paris Hilton pulls up in a Bentley and updates her signature catchphrase to match the campaign’s play on words: “Kay, so that’s hot.”
Adding Hilton to the mix allowed Carl’s Jr. to tap into nostalgia, a ubiquitous part of cultural marketing for the past few years. Hilton starred in an infamous 2005 ad that was typical of the chain’s advertising, which can be best summarized as blondes in bikinis eating burgers. Earle’s efforts for the brand have shared that tone, which Carl’s Jr. had not set out to mimic.
“From a strategy perspective, it really was trying to find that authentic fit versus going back and recreate what we did before,” Gasbarro said. “I don't think it was intentional… this is what an audience today would react to.”
While Earle and Hilton have featured in traditional TV ads for the brand, Carl’s Jr. has worked to extend the campaigns in other paid and owned channels, as well as those of their brand ambassadors. Like other fast-food and QSR chains, loyalty is also a key part of its multichannel strategy; customers using the chain’s app unlock more options for the Build Your Own Bag offering.
“When it comes to something like a loyalty platform, how can we make it unique and different and reward that behavior?” Gasbarro said. “How can we grow those platforms to make them more interesting and unique for the consumers?”
