Hardee’s has always has an celestial connection, between is ‘Super Star’ burger and it’s yellow star logo, but it’s been the brand’s youthful, tongue-in-cheek attitude that has truly come to represent its challenger brand stance in the world of fast-food hamburger giants.

But this last year was big year for space exploration in the news, perhaps the biggest news was the launch of James Webb telescope and its discovery of countless new planets harboring potential life. With that we saw an opportunity for the brand to play into its interstellar roots all while promoting its flagship burger, in a way that only Hardee’s could.

With alien life existing somewhere in the universe becoming ever more fathomable, we knew whatever civilizations might live on these newly discovered exoplanets were missing one crucial thing- The SUPER STAR BURGER- The best burger in existence and the ultimate symbol of our species intelligence.

We sent the Super Star where no burger has gone before —encoding our famous burger into a signal which we transmitted to outer space. The signals will travel at the speed of light, into the universe forever and into the future until they are picked up. And once decoded, the extraterrestrials will find a message with data for the burger’s ingredients DNA and instructions how to assemble and eat it.

We knew the campaign would resonate with Hardee's core target, Gen Z, but it also had the potential to appeal beyond youth and to a different audience. An interest based approach was taken with our PR strategy, focusing on influencers and publications which had a niche in weird news and pop science.

Modelled on the famous Aricebo message sent 50 years ago to our nearest star in the Milky Way by the legendary Carl Sagan, the Super Star signal message is formed as binary code, which forms a simple shapes that any species without a specific language can understand — in this case shapes for the burger ingredients and DNA, how to make it, and eat it.

Using ex Nasa employees, Hardee’s then built a space program grade antenna on top of a Hardee’s Restaurant in an undisclosed location in the middle east to send these signals. People could access the antenna via a website with a live feed of the antenna and the mission control and could send their own Super Star signals.

In just one week the Super Star burgers’ sales increased by a massive 27% across the region and people went on the website to send 15,722 unique signals to outer space.

Pop culture and pop-news publications picked up the story, garnering almost $1.6 million in earned media. The buzz around the campaign increased volume of positive brand sentiment on social media by 230%