As quiet as I've been on the whole Carls Jr thing, I did want to share some web data which reflects some short term (but for how long) lift from the car wash 'n chicken burger combo at CJ (ask for item #69 on the menu...and supersize it STAT)
The only meaningful indicator which is worth anything is the fact that 7.4% of visitors to the Carls Jr website went to the restaurant store locator. Clearly, looking for a store is a pretty obvious beacon of intent...HOWEVER I would like to find out from the folks at Hitwise (who sent me the info) what % of these queries were actually from states that had Carls Jr restaurants!!! As I blogged in a previous post (see the US Map), the coverage of CJ's in the US is about as scant as the clothes on PH's body in the now (in)famous spot!
For starters, searches for Carls Jr increased by a Whopper(ing) 802% but clearly that's off a small base. More impressive is that searches for Paris Hilton (who has to be one of the most coveted search entities out there) increased by 102% - this just give credence to the fact that this spot will be remembered as the "Paris hilton" spot as opposed to the CJ one.
OK, so we know people are searching (wonder why?) for Carls Jr, but what does this mean for business?
The chart basically shows that CJ went from obscurity to a Kingsize level of activity. Of the other companies listed, BK has been Sith sensing, whereas Wendy's has been running a fun loving campaign "Good to be Square".
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