For what we paid her, we got it back a trillion-fold in free press from almost every news program, talk show and magazine in the country. Including countless nods on the net like this, in music videos and in two major motion pictures (like these). Within weeks, local west coast fast-food chain Carl's Jr. became not just a national, but international brand. Between the controversy of the commercial and the crashing of our server for a day, the website containing the “too hot for TV” version was ranked the #1 site in the world during the first week of the launch.
"It's brilliant and I will tell you why. Forget where you stand morally...offstage one of the production assistants said to me, 'Hey I never heard of Carl's Jr. until this ad.' We're sitting here, a 30-second spot on the Today Show costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're talking about it for free. It's on the Tonight Show and let's not forget, the people who are eating burgers are 18 to 25 year old males. ...It's a homerun. Bullseye. You couldn't do better than that."
--Donny Deutsch, The Today Show, NBC-TV, 5/26/05
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