How Hardee’s Stumped AI with a New Burger
Artificial intelligence - it’s all the rage at the moment. Or is it? According to the American restaurant chain Hardee’s, AI has its limitations. The latest campaign for the burger joint is a twist on the current conversation, focusing not on what AI CAN do, but what it CAN’T– which is to think up an image of the brand new ‘Star Burger’.
In the ‘unAImaginable Experiment’, image generating software DALL-E was put to the test and prompted with several different explanations of the newest Hardee’s burger, but with no luck. Producing weird and wacky burger options, there was no resemblance to the actual burger, showing how the software takes things quite literally, as opposed to Hardees’ more human touch. By jumping on the trend, the campaign gained attention for tackling AI in an unconventional way, and in an environment where there is a growing concern about tech taking over, this spot shows how there’s still a way to go.
‿ and us’ executive creative director Jamie Kennaway speaks to LBB’s Nisna Mahtani about how an idea came from the AI conversation, the quick turnaround and how the campaign is now being taken into space.
LBB> When did you first decide to take on the AI trend for this Hardee’s campaign?
Jamie> We were a few days into the growing angst and hysteria of AI which gripped me, my colleagues, and my friends – regionally and around the world – everyone was genuinely feeling this was a ‘birth of the Gutenberg press/birth of photography’ moment and things would not be the same again.
What developed over the coming weeks was more of this, but in those initial days, we knew we had to act fast to do a timely message everyone needed to hear at that time, ride on the sentiment and offer a viewpoint in the completely opposite direction. Instead of showing what AI CAN do, show what it can’t – all to remind people to take a breath. AI isn’t there yet, and probably isn’t, therefore, coming for you. This idea lived and died not just in the concept, or execution, but in the timing and fast turn-around with the release. And as we released, even the thought leaders were still only focused on what it could do and how it will ‘streamline’ the world, and potential employment.
LBB> What did the client think when you pitched them the idea?
Jamie> They loved it and thought it was a no brainer… They were great and have been great — since winning the Hardee’s business in 2020, we have built a great relationship with them here [in the UAE] and globally. They are open to fun engaging and brave ideas. For them to agree to showcase all the burgers that weren’t a delicious ‘Super Star’. With no logo and just using the new burger’s name, it was brave, but they saw the merit and went with us in a five day turnaround from presenting to releasing.
The fact that this whole idea put the Super Star at the heart of the conversation was an easy sell — the campaign highlighted not just the pitfalls of AI, and therefore our security, but that the real Super Star is out of this world. Our campaign eventually seeded images of the real Super Star with the simple message #unAImaginable, so get to a Hardee’s and eat one for real.
LBB> Can you tell us about the process of prompting DALL-E, what you inputted into the searches and can you share some of the results?
Jamie> DALL-E works like most of the other AI programs — you enter a prompt for what you want and in seconds, it delivers something unachievable by a normal human hand in that time. We made sure we were genuinely giving it a chance with our search entries. The first thing we wanted was to see if it could “IMAGINE THE SUPER STAR BURGER BY HARDEE’S”. To our delight, it came back with magical error after magical error, corroborating our suspicion that it couldn’t literally come up with everything as we all thought. which made for arresting entertaining visuals of the mistakes. We couldn’t believe how amazing these mistakes looked and we knew we had the grounds for an amazing campaign. We then prompted it in more detail, listing the full recipe, and still, it couldn’t deliver.
LBB> Why was it important to highlight the human touch for this campaign?
Jamie> We are human, so to think humans are obsolete is a concern we can all relate to. The light relief, therefore, was universally loved. Also from a pure product perspective, NOTHING beats a REAL Super Star, imagined by humans, made by humans, enjoyed by humans.
LBB> How have people responded to the campaign? Can you share a few reactions?
Jamie> We have a bucket of good sentiment about the campaign idea, timing, message and arresting visual executions — it has been picked up all over the globe in the world of creativity, and referenced regularly as a best in class idea using AI. What THIS idea however does that others don’t, is zag in the opposite direction to the other ideas using AI for what it can DO. Showing what AI can't do in this tongue-in-cheek way, really resonated with people with a message everyone needed to hear and offers a more optimistic outlook for us plucky humans. We hope it stays that way!
LBB> You let the images and text speak for themselves as there’s no narration for this spot. Why was this the best way to showcase the SUPER STAR burger?
Jamie> It was simple to follow, and worked well as content online where the narration is limited. There is also something more solid when you see it written.
LBB> Is there anything else in the works that you can tell us about?
Jamie> There is! Continuing the tech/science theme, we wanted to do our part for the age old question of ‘is anyone out there?’. With many planets being discovered by the James Webb telescope this year, on the 28th of January, we encoded the Super Star burger into a signal (containing data for ingredients DNA and instructions on how to assemble it) to beam to other star systems for potential intelligent life in the future to pick up, decode, and make a Super Star there, on their planet. The campaign called THE SUPERSTAR SIGNAL is currently rolling out where anyone who buys a Super Star can send one to different coordinates across the cosmos by accessing via a website for a specially made antenna we built on top of a Hardee’s Restaurant to beam our burger signals.
LBB> What do you think the future of AI will look like for campaigns like this?
Jamie> I have no idea, and I'm happy keeping it that way! One thing for sure is, it's not going away, and is going to get better and better, so I'm sure we can have more fun with both AI and the subject of its increasing capability, intelligence, and uses. We hope, like the metaverse generally, people regroup back to the real tangible world and human experiences, and of course real food.
