Live sports advertising has long been a powerful awareness driver for QSR brands, but we needed it to do more—we needed it to drive real, measurable business impact. By leveraging first-party data, dynamic ad delivery, and real-time optimization, we’ve transformed traditional live sports media into a precision performance channel. This approach allows us to connect with our customers where it matters most and turn media investment into tangible sales growth.
Accessibility Tools
PMG Digital Made for Humans
Live Sports as Growth Engine
Transforming QSR marketing into data-driven growth engine
Capabilities
- Alli
- Full-Funnel Omnichannel Media Strategy, Planning & Buying
- Data & Analytics
- Reporting & Data Visualization
Unlike its competitors, CKE operates two distinct brands with regional footprints—Hardee’s in the Southeast and Midwest, Carl’s Jr. on the West Coast—making traditional national media buys inefficient and wasteful. The company’s advertising had to deliver more than just brand awareness. Every dollar spent needed to drive measurable sales impact, ensuring that media investments converted into in-store purchases. However, live sports advertising—a mainstay of QSR marketing—had long suffered from a lack of direct attribution to sales. Most brands rely on broad-reach TV buys with no way to track whether an ad actually brought a customer into a restaurant.
We sought a new approach: one that would allow CKE to reach the right customers in the right markets, optimize in real time, and prove business impact beyond traditional awareness metrics.
Rather than following the industry standard of national ad placements with little geographic specificity, CKE partnered with PMG to develop a regionally optimized, insight-driven approach to live sports advertising. The solution lay separately in Amazon’s Thursday Night Football (TNF) and College Football sponsorships, but only if executed with precision, matching media investment to actual store locations while leveraging digital-first strategies to turn the two distinct programs into measurable performance channels.
TNF provided a unique opportunity. Unlike traditional linear TV, Amazon’s platform allowed for advanced audience segmentation and dynamic ad delivery. We capitalized on this capability, making CKE the first QSR to implement Amazon’s Audience-based Creative (“ABC”) creative copy-splitting—an approach that delivered region-specific ads within a national TNF buy.
College Football required a different playbook. Instead of buying broad national placements, our team designed a hyper-localized strategy that aligned with Hardee’s strongest markets, focusing on SEC, ACC, and Big Ten games that overlapped with the chain’s store footprint. Hardee’s also secured an exclusive sponsorship of SEC Network’s “SEC This Morning,” reinforcing its breakfast positioning with a core audience of early-morning sports fans.
63%
Higher net new buyer conversion rate
2%
Transaction lift
107%
Increase in loyalty sign- ups
With TNF, PMG leveraged data about credit card sales lift to maximize efficiency. Ads were served dynamically, ensuring that Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s targeted the right audiences. A viewer in Los Angeles saw a Carl’s Jr. ad while a fan in Atlanta got Hardee’s messaging, while both watched the same broadcast, limiting wasted impressions and delivering relevant creative.
For College Football, PMG structured a market-specific buy that allocated media based on Hardee’s geographic footprint. The campaign prioritized marquee matchups on ABC/ESPN and regional networks like SECN, ACCN, and BTN, ensuring high concentration in areas where Hardee’s stores were located. Additionally, the SEC Network partnership gave Hardee’s a dominant share of voice in one of its most valuable customer segments, reinforcing brand relevance at key purchase moments.
Throughout the campaign, we analyzed real-time performance signals, including foot traffic, app downloads, and in-store purchases (via a first-of-its-kind measurement framework that tracked ad exposure at the household level and linked it to credit card transactions), adjusting spending dynamically based on actual sales performance. Instead of relying on broad frequency targets, the strategy prioritized incremental reach and conversion lift, making each impression work harder.
Our innovative approach turned one of the oldest forms of QSR marketing into a modern, data-driven growth engine, proving that live sports media drive performance, not just awareness. The combination of Amazon’s Thursday Night Football and College Football correlated to a sustained average transaction lift of over 2% across an 11-week period.
CKE found a sweet spot with the TNF audience, beating QSR conversion rate benchmarks by nearly 40% and surpassing net new customer conversion benchmarks by 63%. Additionally, CKE saw significant increases in all app metrics following airings on TNF, including double-digit gains in purchases compared to baseline.
These campaigns, as part of an integrated omnichannel effort, set a new precedent for QSR media strategy. No longer constrained to broad demographic targeting and unverifiable impressions, we leveraged first-party data, real-time programming optimization, and direct transaction attribution to prove ROI. The ability to link ad exposure to real-world purchases was a game-changer, giving CKE a competitive edge in an industry where most brands still struggle to measure the effectiveness of live sports advertising.
