Obnoxious Fast-Food Ad of the Week: Hardee's

The company has been hurt by its pricing policies. While chains like McDonald's (MCD) are snapping up the increasing numbers of "value customers" bred by the recession, CKE has hesitated to hop on the bandwagon. "We're not just letting these customers go away, although the value customer, again, is your lowest margin, your lowest profit customer," CEO Andrew Pudzer said during a conference call with analysts in September. "And I'm not going to try and compete with people that are giving food away."

At the same time, though, he promised that "our agency and our marketing people working on some very creative ways to address the value customer and the affordability issue and, you know, we think we'll be real successful at it."

We are left to conclude, then, that CKE believes that the best way to attract "value customers" is with A-hole jokes.