Carl's Jr. Letter

Attn: Brad R. Haley & Andrew F. Puzder

Dear Carl’s Jr. Executives,

I am writing to address my concern with your advertising for your products. I am sure I am not alone, nor the first, to inform you that the sexual objectification of women displayed in your marketing is both offensive and highly distasteful. I hope to be more than just another nagging voice, however, by offering some pertinent research perspectives on the matter.

The most interesting to you I assume would be that, while individual studies do suggest that sexual content in advertising does increase attention-getting, but also that sex is distracting from the product being promoted and can thus decrease attention and memory, and that sex does not generally appeal to women and can turn women, particularly conservatives, away from the product. Most importantly a study done just last year complied data from 44 different studies on sex in advertising and performed a meta analysis on it, resulting in the conclusions that brands that used sex as a marketing tool were evaluated less liked, there was no effect on purchasing intent, and as the sexuality of the ad increased, the purchasing intentions actually decreased. See Reichert 2001, Dahl 2008; 2009, Lull & Bushman 2015 – meta analysis for reference.

In addition to its impact on the direct profit of advertising, sexual objectification of women teaches women who are exposed to it that they should view themselves and others as objects, feel less competent, have body dissatisfaction, and etc. So not only are you making enemies of women by the objectification in ads, you are helping to corrupt their self-worth, and this impact even children who see this media. I would assume you would want your product associated with positive emotions instead of negative connotations.

I personally quite like the food at Carl’s Jr.; I enjoy eating at your establishment. But I cannot justify patronage to a company that has such a blatant disregard for the value of women. Carl’s Jr. is a place where I cannot even suggest when eating out, for fear of being associated with approval or acceptance of those awful ads. Your marketing actively turns me away from your product, which to my mind seems counterintuitive. I would heartily request that you change your marketing strategy; I would be glad to return my patronage to your establishment and only hope you at least consider the arguments presented in this email and realize what you are saying about women with your ads. Thank you for your time.

-Amanda Cottle