Carl’s Jr. wanted to drive app downloads with a Super Bowl campaign. So we developed a concept that could be repeated year over year in Free Burger Day, a one-day burger giveaway at Carl’s Jr. locations all over the country. Featuring a prime time Super Bowl commercial, a robust organic and influencer led social media campaign, as well as digital activations that would engage users through gamified experiences and dozens of easter eggs to uncover.

Fast food giveaways have been known to lead to some insane responses from customers. So, to prepare Carl’s Jr. employees for the craziness to come, we created a series of over the top internal training videos. Unfortunately, those videos were leaked (on purpose) on Carl’s Jr. social channels. The videos led viewers to an internal training site complete with password protected information, a four part quiz that ended with a printable FBD certificate, and a helpful little star who happened to be going through a digital identity crisis. People started to speculate all over the internet, so Carl’s Jr. put out a statement addressing the controversy starring their actual CMO. Once the dust settled the day after Free Burger Day, Carl’s Jr. sought to make amends for all the madness with yet another giveaway, this time for a free milkshake.

For this campaign, we were targeting a younger generation of fast food goers such as Gen Z and Millenials. Our approach in reaching this audience was to utilize over-the-top irreverent humor in our internal training videos, poking fun at corporate style internal training, campy special effects, and purposefully bad acting. In addition, we knew we had to release the elements in a way that felt “accidental” in order to fool some people into thinking the leak was real. Since partnerships need to be disclosed on social media platforms, we disguised our TikTok influencer postings by turning them into attempted coverups where the influencer would “expose” Carl’s Jr.‘s crazy training videos.

We kicked off our campaign for Free Burger Day by "accidentally" leaking our training videos via an internal email to all Carl’s Jr. customers exactly one week prior to the Super Bowl, followed by a quick apology urging them not to use the leaked link. Simultaneously, we leaked the videos on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit's r/fastfood to tease anticipation. To downplay the leaks, we humorously addressed them with outdated memes. TikTok influencer posts were cleverly disguised as attempts to "expose" the training videos to meet disclosure requirements. On Super Bowl day, our CMO addressed the controversy with a statement confirming Free Burger Day's authenticity. The following day, another statement was issued, apologizing for the chaos and offering a free milkshake coupon as a gesture of goodwill.

The campaign resulted in over one billion impressions for the brand as well as 250K app downloads and roughly 200K my rewards sign-ups. Following the Super Bowl this lead to the Carl's Jr. app being the #1 app in food and drink mobile apps, and #25 across all mobile apps.

In the past Carl’s Jr. has famously utilized over-the-top sexual imagery in their advertising. Our campaign was part of a rebranding effort in order to wipe the slate clean, creating a new brand perception around irreverent humor that speaks to the target audience of the younger, fast food enjoying crowd.