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Next up for Paris Hilton: a handoff from Carl’s Jr. to its corporate sibling Hardee’s, as her infamous, lubricious swimsuit-Bentley-running hose-burger orgy TV commercial goes east to launch the new Spicy BBQ Thickburger, topped with Tabasco-spiked BBQ sauce and Texas Toothpicks (insert joke using “spicy” “thick” and “hot” here).
The commercial, which the L.A.-based Parent’s Television Council called “basically soft-core porn” when it ran in the Western U.S. last month, will begin airing in Hardee’s Midwest and Southeast markets the week of June 27. The ad will run after 9:00 p.m. in programs appealing to the chain’s demographic of 18-to-34 males.
Brad Haley, Hardee’s executive vice president of marketing said, “We consider it a racy ad. It was designed to be a racy ad, but we don’t consider it pornographic. I think we knew that when we ran Paris, she would create attention. That was part of the appeal of using her.”
It, um, worked. How many commercials have critical cartoons created against them?
The CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s chains, couldn’t be happier. Andy Puzder told MarketWatch, “Really, we couldn’t have afforded to buy the ad time that we’ve gotten. It has been amazing. We spent about $4 [million] or $5 million for the ad buy, and I can’t imagine the free publicity we have gotten,” adding the spot has been played repeatedly on news and entertainment programming in addition to its paid placement, and has been the recipient of intense interest on the Internet.
Hilton’s publicist, Rob Shuter, said she did the ads (extended version and stills here) because she thought they were funny, and hot.
More on the perils of Paris here.
