Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s were looking to launch their new, super indulgent Prime Rib Menu which just happened to fall at the onset of a global recession. Knowing that Prime Rib for lunch or breakfast felt a bit extravagant especially amid a recession, we needed an idea that gave people a sense of urgency and fomo around our Prime Rib Menu to get them talking and wanting in on the action.

Our goal was to create hype about our Prime Rib Menu to help boost sales of the Prime Rib Menu nationwide.

The Prime Rib Venture: a (definitely legal) investment opportunity where customers could get their hands on the new Carl’s Jr. & Hardee’s Prime Rib Menu at a fraction of the cost.

The plan was to get people to invest in our Prime Rib Menu early to create hype. The earlier customers would invest, the higher their return on investment. There were three investment rounds, those that invest earliest in round 1, invested $1 to receive up to $10 of beefy returns in the form of Carl’s/Hardee’s gift cards, those that invest in round 2, invested $1 to receive $7 of beefy returns, and those that invest in round 3 invested $1 to receive $5 of beefy returns.

To create awareness and buzz around our Prime Rib Venture we launched videos and posts on paid social media that led to a landing page, and got influencers like Lance Bass to spread word of mouth about the one of a kind deal the Prime Rib Venture truly was.

On October 1, we launched PrimeRibVenture.com where investors could invest and receive big returns. We knew we needed to create a sense of fomo so we launched with a bang across PR, social, and Reddit. We released a promotional video on social explaining how the investment opportunity worked. We got Lance Bass, a true hustler with a career spanning music, film, & television to get the word out with his own testimonial.

There were three rounds in which investors could invest $1 to receive a gift card. Round one, 1,500 investors could receive a $10 gift card, round two, 5,000 investors could receive a $7 gift card and round three, 9,000 investors could receive a $5 gift card. On October 13, we closed the venture with a tidy ending by shutting down the site and informing people that giving away free money wasn’t a “sustainable business model”.

During the first round of investments, all 1,500 investments were taken in under an hour, surpassing our expectations. All 5,000 of the investments were taken in under 8 hours and during round 2 and all 9,000 investments were taken in under 24 hours during round 3.

In the end, recruiting a small population of 15,500 Prime Rib Menu investors had a huge ROI across systemwide national Prime Rib Menu sales. It contributed to a 78% spike across all prime rib Menu sales once the Prime Rib Venture launched (a 58% spike in systemwide sales throughout the full four weeks), helping Carl's Jr. achieve double QSR category sales while Hardee's reached sales about 40% higher than QSR category.

The campaign also garnered some buzz, which fed into the fomo with 43.4m+ total earned press impressions and 5.8m+ total earned social impressions driven by press coverage.