The following letter was sent by CKE Restaurants to Lauren Ornelas (Sullivan), President of VIVA!, in response to her protest against Carl's Jr.'s pornographic "chicken nuggets" commercial running in California. As the letter explains, CKE targets Carl's Jr.'s "heaviest users (our most frequent customers to our restaurants), the young adult male." 01/25/02

Thank you for taking the time to express your concern about Carl's Jr.'s ad campaign. As a valued Carl's Jr. customer, we [sic] appreciate your comments and we take them very seriously.

We sincerely apologize if we offended you in any way . . . or if we caused you to become angry or dissatisfied with our company [which targets the young male appetite for "meat" and fantasies of gang rape]. Due to the competitive nature of our business today, our company needs to create advertising that is "noticeable" and "memorable" [we're forced to do salacious advertising in order to sell our cruel products] . Since Carl's Jr. is a smaller regional chain with a much smaller advertising budget than our national competitors, our advertising messages (on TV and radio) must create a high level of awareness through bold and aggressive advertising [by abusing the helpless and encouraging society to imitate us; also, we're just little guys compared to those big guys like Wendy's, so you should pity us] .

We have created two new advertising campaigns this year: one is targeted at our heaviest users (our most frequent customers to our restaurants), the young adult male; the other campaign has a much more adult approach, with broader appeal. These campaigns allow us to attract the attention of our most frequent users and also to attract a much larger audience through creative, memorable ads.

We understand that our commercials are sometimes interpreted differently than originally intended, and for that I must assure you our goal is always to create appeal for our great Carl's Jr. food products.

Again, thank you for your comments. We honestly value your patronage and greatly appreciate your remarks.

To protest the message Carl's Jr./CKE Restaurants. is intentionally aiming at "young adult males," call Carl's Jr./ CKE Restaurants toll-free at 1-800-422-4141, ext. 1232, and 1-800-758-2275.

United Poultry Concerns, Inc. PO Box 150 Machipongo, VA 23405-0150 757-678-7875 FAX: 757-678-5070 www.upc-online.org (Action Alert - United Poultry Concerns News Advisory on Carl's Jr.)

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