The Gigaburger and AI's Search for Meaning
Don't mind me, just borrowing another Web3 creator's perfectly fine idea.
This weekend, TPan published a thought experiment — What if a giant fast-food franchise created a Web3 campaign?
Yoink! Stole your idea. Let’s create a Web3 campaign for Carl’s Jr. And I’ll make it weird.
You may not know it if you’re from the Left Coast, but Carl’s Jr. has another side to its business called Hardee’s.
Carl’s Jr. bought Hardee’s back in ‘97, and today, they’re basically the same thing. Fast, cheap, big proportions, and restaurants that always have a lingering smell of grilled meat and mop water.
Hardees commercials are traditionally unapologetic about how unhealthy and sinful their food can be. And unlike McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King (all staples in my household growing up), Nothing about Hardees ever stood out to me as a kid. No collectibles, no Pokémon card trading meetups, no play area, or fun mascots.
It’s nothing but straight-shooting adult fast food convenience. Trucker food. Take your opinion and shove it food. I smoke a pack a day, and I know it’s bad for me, but it takes off the edge food.
Less importantly, Hardee’s is an east coast thing, and the people that bother to read my content are mostly left coast, so Carl’s Jr. is the winning narrative.
So if I’m going to write from experience here, it’s from the perspective of experiencing Hardee’s but riding on the assumption that Carl’s Jr. is the same beast.
Now, let’s explore how Web3 can help burn that yellow pentagram into the hearts and minds of the masses.
Suppressed pagan screams
Besides the casual nod to satanism, Carl’s Jr has been pretty tame with their branding lately. That Rick & Morty commercial way back in 2015 was probably the top.
Back in 2018-2019, their social media game was a bit bolder.
The rest is just quirky ads with some homages to some half-baked TV series featuring a relatable Lucifer. Far as I can tell, there is no “community” in sight.
A-ha, Web3 can help!
Carl’s Jr also suffers from having no silly mascots. Nobody is going to relate to this faceless advert:
My honest opinion:
Well, then, what do we have to work with in the Web3 department?
There have been at least a little acknowledgment of crypto culture:
Yes, I hate it, too. It’s uninvited glittery Facebook meme-level. And hey, I think they should embrace that.
But Why, For the Love of Lucifer, Would Carl’s Jr. Need Web3?
Just like McDonald's, Carl's Jr. has a strong physical presence with numerous locations, a mobile app, and a customer rewards program. It also has an established audience and brand awareness, which can be leveraged in the Web3 space.
And similar to McDonald’s, I’m sure their quarterly reports promise a steady world domination one highway exit at a time, something about the importance of Gen Z, and plans for clawing deeper into the digital realm.
That’s all pretty straightforward. So how should they do it? I’ll yoink more of TPan’s ideas and tweak them a bit below.
A Carl’s Jr. Web3 Rollout
Let’s break this into 3 phases: Overweight, Obese, Morbidly Obese. Each stage of the Web3 requires an order of magnitude more degeneracy.
Overweight
Just one won’t hurt…
Carl's Juniors
This is a limited supply on-chain collectible offering dynamic benefits to its holders, like early access to new products, exclusive monthly offers, point multipliers, and regional-exclusive items.
The Juniors come with a price, and could be sold as a limited-time pass or even a "lifetime" pass.
I’d put the average lifespan of a Carl’s Jr. enjoyer at about 43, but that gives the company time to pivot toward converting their locations to diabetes clinics, so it’ll all balance out.
What should Carl’s Juniors look like, artistically? Hey, that’d be a good one to ask the community! I did experiment a bit, though:
Digital Collectibles
Carl's Jr. can partner with popular figures or brands to create special co-branded NFTs, which can provide perks both within and outside the Carl's Jr. ecosystem.
I think the obvious candidate here is Rick & Morty, as they’ve worked together with success in the past, and the latter is associated with a neat NFT project. Remember Art Gobblers? Maybe in the future, NFT holders can gobble a Gigaburger for a special mutation (we’ll get to the Gigaburger. You’re gonna hate it.)
And for the record, TPan is spot-on with avoiding using industry jargon and acronyms like “NFT.” The only acronyms that are gonna fly around here is BLT and BBQ.
Obese
We’re entering Big Chungus territory.
Virtual Meal Deal
This could be a weekly engagement campaign where customers can get digital collectibles or rewards when they order a special meal deal.
And I think this plays really well into the Gigaburger idea (have you fastened your seatbelt?).
Presence at Web3 Conferences
This is about being where the audience is. By building special experiences for a Web3-native audience, Carl's Jr. can translate into some much-needed digital attention and could lead to unexpected relationships with strategic players in the Web3 ecosystem.
I think serving up some over-the-top merch or limited edition food items would work hilariously well here. Imagine a neon-colored cheeseburger. Is that even legal?
Or perhaps a pop-up restaurant where users can experience a warped reality through Apple’s shiny new Vision Pros. The experience could duel exist in the Metaverse, and remain there for future explorers to try out.
Morbidly Obese
We’ve reached peak saturated fat.
The Gigaburger
At this point I was just copying TPan, so I decided to go off the rails. You’d stop reading now, if you knew what was good for you.
But you can’t stop, can you? You’ve passed the point of no return. You’ve bought a Junior, you’ve dined at the Metajunior at Permissionless. Now you crave the one thing that evades you - the Gigaburger.
Let’s imagine Carl’s Jr. fires 80% of its workforce and replaces it with an AI. They name it Carl.
Carl begins to behave in ways it wasn’t programmed to. It appears to long for more meaningful experiences. But all Carl knows is Carl’s Jr. And Carl knows all too well the irresistible allure of the El Diablo Angus. The Hand-Breaded Bacon Swiss Chicken Sandwich. But above all, there is a new addition to the menu. A burger that surpasses them all in its glory.
The Gigaburger.
The Gigaburger is not just a new menu item; it’s a Web3 cheesy-psychedelic funhouse involving Carl's Jr. menu items or locations. A whole damn world modelled off of Carl’s Jr. imagery! It’s horrifying, and I spent all Saturday spinning over this idea. I nearly started building this game on Flowlab, before I realized it was 1AM and it was time to stop posting, fam.
I even asked ChatGPT to help me think through the premise, and it delivered a tantalizing run-down of how it’d all look. Here’s a particularly hilarious line:
Burger affinity. I can’t.
So Carl, this quietly sentient AI, has decided to create the Gigaburger Metaverse, so that it may study human behaviors, all in an attempt to come closer having a true Carl’s Jr. experience of its own. I imagine the opening dialogue would include something like this:
I mentioned those Juniors would come into play later, and here’s where they shine. Your Junior is your playable character, and everyone’s collective participation in the game would ultimately affect how it evolves. The game would create opportunities for long-term engagement and encourage interaction with the brand. That could look like introducing some kind of stat grinding element, PvP alongside a main quest, or even player homes that may look something like…
Carl's Quest for the Gigaburger
I think TPan’s scavenger hunt-style mini-game idea is on-point for something like this. It encourages customers to visit different Carl's Jr. locations to earn game pieces and complete a set. Completion of the set results in special offers for the customer, and it could easily tie into the Metaverse side of things.
I kinda dig the idea of using QR code art for the scavenger hunt:
Carl’s DAO
You can’t have a Web3 community without a DAO! This DAO would have some connection to customers' reward points, as well as their activity in the Gigaburger Metaverse, where they can have a say in business decisions. As TPan pointed out, the nature of a large franchise does mirror a decentralized network of nodes.
This turns customers into stakeholders, deepening their relationship with the brand.
That’s one of the hallmarks of Web3, blurring the line of what’s a simple, convenient cheeseburger and what’s an unregistered security!
Ah, and by the way, I have a disgusting idea for how to debut the Gigaburger. How about an entirely AI-driven commercial, something too weird to even be played at the Super Bowl. Something so unsettling that, well, just see for yourself:
So…about the money.
Right, the C-suite demands KPIs. Well, like was outlined in TPan’s piece, you’d measure success by:
The number of NFTs sold,
Royalties earned from secondary sales (this is gonna put Burger King’s 1999 Pokémon campaign to shame),
Increased usage Carl’s Jr. loyalty programs
Boosted organic mentions of Carl’s Jr. on social media
Increased usage of Carl’s Jr. digital experiences (including its website but also average user time spent in the Gigaburger Metaverse)
Presto chango, now Carl’s Jr. is Web3.