In honor the 30^th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption.  

After revisiting Exxon’s disaster in Valdez, then exploring the troubled origins of Jack Box, we bite into another burger bungle in this week’s Dirty 30 with the troubled family relationship of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Jason Marker was at the helm of KFC during its wildly successful campaign featuring a Colonel Sanders spokesperson played by a rotating cast of comedic actors. After that success, Marker left to accept the position of CEO at CKE, the holding company for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Marker explained that, as his first marketing initiative as CEO, he wanted to transition away from the erotic burger ads that had preceded him. He was determined to transition CKE’s marketing efforts from targeting young, thirsty guys to young, hungry people. 

To kick it off these rebranding efforts, CKE created a commercial that not only took a number of humorous shots at the brand’s previous marketing efforts, but also consolidated the two brands into one. Using a familiar tack, much in the same way as the reinvented Colonel Sanders, Carl Hardee Sr. played the brand’s patriarch returned after a 15-year hiatus to take the company back from his party boi son, Carl Hardee Jr. Dad banished the company’s sex-sells mentality so they could get back what made people fall in love with them in the first place: well-made food with great ingredients and a healthy side of pride. 

However, just a year later, the two brands are diverging to a degree unseen since Carl’s Jr. purchased the Nashville-based Hardee’s to form CKE. During the co-branded year of togetherness, research found that the Western chain of Carl’s Jr. had a core customer base that favored the restaurant’s bold, in-your-face flavors for a late night snack, leading to the brand’s new “Big Taste You Can Feel” campaign. 

At the same time, Hardee’s, based in the Southeast and South, did a significant amount more of breakfast business than their left-coast counterpart and realized their core customer base valued authenticity, as seen in their new “Tastes like America” campaign. 

It remains to be seen if this divide-and-conquer strategy will provide the boost that CKE is searching for in the hyper competitive better-burger market, but at least everyone can agree that bikinis and burgers no longer mix. 

The thing about a brand crisis is that each one is different. While so much has changed over the past 30 years that Geile/Leon has been around, there is also so much that has remained the same. Being forthright, proactive and responsive to customers’ needs is a timeless art, but with information traveling so much more rapidly and consumers being more informed than ever, effective crisis management is now more important than ever. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Dirty 30, and check out our previous Dirty 30s: 

Exxon Goes Tone Deaf in Valdez

Jack Comes Back to Save His Company

In honor of the 30^th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption. 

After kicking off the series last week with Exxon’s disaster in Valdez, we take a look at the thinking man’s fast food clown and the crisis that created him.

In January of 1993, Jack in the Box suffered the first and worst of what many fast-food chains have suffered since: an E coli outbreak. In a rash of cases that affected hundreds, undercooked burgers caused an existential crisis for the chain. While Jack in the Box did take on the medical expenses of the victims and run an extensive PR campaign taking responsibility and vowing to provide improved oversight, customers were rightfully wary to return to the chain. Despite Jack in the Box’s ensuing advertising campaigns offering steep discounts, sales decreased by 24% between 1992 and 1995. 

In order to alter the fate of the franchise, newly hired agency TBWA Chiat/Day went Jack to the future. The iconic clown head was originally the franchise’s mascot during their early days, famously featured in the drive thru with speaker and microphone inside so drivers would place your order directly with Jack. However, in an effort to differentiate themselves from a certain family-focused fast food chain with an arguably much more iconic clown and golden arches, a Jack in the Box advertisement in 1980 literally blew up the clown head with the company’s leadership declaring the restaurant to be a more mature burger destination. 

In 1995, over a decade after they blew up their mascot, creative director Rick Sittig envisioned the return of Jack Box. The deposed mascot made his return, this time with a suit and a mission. In a television spot that featured Jack declaring a new era, He punctuated his promise for change by throwing a bomb into the boardroom, literally blowing up the company’s leadership. This reversal of fortune helped provide a metaphor for ridding the company of those who the public viewed as responsible for the outbreak (even though none of the company’s leadership were harmed or even fired in the rebranding).

The new, irreverent Jack Box was a huge hit, a relatable character became the change agent that their customers desired. Jack had such a resonance with fast food fans that he remained at the forefront of the chain’s marketing efforts for nearly three decades. The chain reaped immediate benefits from the branding shift, bouncing back from a $63 million loss in 1995 to net earnings of $20 million in 1996. Per-store sales rose by 7.2% and customer visits grew by 7.7% thanks to the clown-face of the franchise.

The thing about a brand crisis is that each one is different. While so much has changed over the past 30 years that Geile/Leon has been around, there is also so much that has remained the same. Being forthright, proactive and responsive to customers’ needs is a timeless art, but with information traveling so much more rapidly and consumers being more informed than ever, effective crisis management is now more important than ever. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Dirty 30, and if you missed it, go back and last week’s Dirty 30: Exxon Goes Tone Deaf in Valdez.

In honor of the 30^th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption. 

First we take a trip back to the first year of G/L’s existence, 1989, which also happens to be the same year of one of the biggest crisis management snafus in history.

Exactly 30 years ago, a series of low reactions exacerbated one of the most famous man-made natural disasters in history, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It all began when an intoxicated ship captain was too sloshed to keep the oil tanker from running aground, piercing his vessel’s hull and dumping oil into the ocean just off the Alaskan coastline. Exxon’s slow-moving response to the crisis only made things worse, making them seem indifferent and aloof. 

In the most successful responses to corporate disasters, brands own the fault, apologize, and outline steps they will take to rectify the situation and change the culture that allowed it to happen in the first place.

However, Exxon remained silent for days while the public saw images of wildlife dying and pristine coastlines tainted from the spill. Exxon’s CEO at the time declined to visit the site of the disaster, rather delegating low-level officials to the scene. Nobody from Exxon disseminated any information to the press, forcing reporters to visit Valdez, Alaska to obtain any information on Exxon’s efforts stem the spill, which were slow and insufficient. 

After 10 days of contradictory and misleading statements, Exxon did finally run an ad across newspapers nationwide (keep in mind, this was 30 years ago) that did nothing to address any of the public’s concerns or accept responsibility for the disaster. 

There is no easy fix for a tragedy of this magnitude, but the mishandling of the fallout from the incident only exacerbated an already terrible situation.

The thing about a brand crisis is that each one is different. While so much has changed over the past 30 years that Geile/Leon has been around, there is also so much that has remained the same. Being forthright, proactive and responsive to customers’ needs is a timeless art, but with information traveling so much more rapidly and consumers being more informed than ever, effective crisis management is now more important than ever. 

Stay tuned for the next week’s installment of the Dirty 30, Jack Comes Back to Save His Company.