I can’t say I enjoy looking at him as much as I do Paris Hilton, but then again, maybe he does a better job at drawing my attention to the product he is selling. That “him” is 13-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who is now a pitch man for the sister fast food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.
The two restaurants were separate entities until 1997, when CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr., purchased the struggling Hardee’s (which, I may add, I loved as a kid – the Hardee’s Frisco Burger was tremendous and for a while they had a “long” cheeseburger which was might tasty). Today, they still retain their separate brands, with Carl’s Jr. out west and Hardee’s in the east and Midwest. In an effort to reinvent itself, Hardee’s followed Carl’s Jr.’s lead and soon introduced the Thickburger, which, as it sounds, is a rather large burger. Carl’s Jr. had previously launched the Six Dollar Burger, a similar food concept, so named because it supposedly rivaled the quality of a “sit down” restaurant’s burger.
In 2005, Carl’s Jr. began a controversial new ad campaign for its Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Burger. In the commercials, a scantily clad Paris Hilton washed and crawled all over a car before taking a huge bite of the burger. Since then, both restaurants have run other commercials with a similar theme of attractive women with little clothing taking honking bites out of oversized hamburgers. Not all of the commercials stick to lovely ladies, though. Some have just focused on the face of a good looking guy as he bites into a burger. Others, more recently, have gone with the same face-burger close-up, but have used the characters Quicksilver and Colossus from the film X-Men: Days of Future Past.
And now we get to Phil Hellmuth. At the same time that Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s brought back Paris Hilton for another steamy ad campaign, it also introduced a commercial for the Texas BBQ Thickburger featuring the poker champ. Dressed all in black with sunglasses and his “PH” hat, as we’re all used to seeing him, he does his thing, chomping into that messy burger, partially in slow motion.
This is not Hellmuth’s first national advertising rodeo. In 2008, his likeness and words were printed on special edition cans of Milwaukee’s Best Light. The beer also used 2006 WSOP Main Event Champion Joe Hachem in its humorous “Men Should Act Like Men” ad campaign and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson in hybrid commercial/poker strategy spots.
What makes the fast food commercial different is that it is the first time I can remember (correct me if I’m forgetting something in the last decade or so) that a poker pro has made an appearance in entertainment or media simply because he is a celebrity and not because the movie, program, or ad has anything to do with poker. The Milwaukee’s Best Light commercials and special edition cans all had direct tie-ins with the World Series of Poker, as the beer was one of the primary sponsors of the poker festival. Poker players have appeared in movies, but I can’t think of one where they weren’t cast as poker players. Here, Phil Hellmuth is himself. Yes, he’s a poker pro, but the commercial has nothing to do with poker. It has to do with burgers. Hellmuth stands on his own as a celebrity, not just as a poker player.
