CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. (“CKE”), a privately held company based in Franklin, Tennessee, runs and operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. With both a US and international footprint, Carl’s Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardee’s Restaurants LLC have over 3,900 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 42 foreign countries and U.S. territories.
With such an expansive footprint as theirs, CKE recognized the importance of sustaining a consistent brand experience for its customers to uphold the integrity and relatability of each of its brands, worldwide.
CKE previously worked with third party agencies to handle their advertising and creative needs – including the management of their digital marketing assets. By relying on multiple agencies, CKE didn’t have one central point for all of their marketing collateral. Without a central hub for the team to self serve, it resulted in franchisees constantly approaching and inundating the marketing team with content requests.
Realizing this issue, CKE approached IntelligenceBank in need of a centralized platform to streamline their branding assets and showcase brand guidelines to educate their broader team about their brand. They recognized that this would help them inspire their broader team, ensure brand governance and get the most out of their content.
The Challenge
To address this situation, CKE needed a Digital Asset Management (DAM) and an Online Brand Portal that would serve as an organized single source of truth for all their assets while upholding their brand’s integrity based on their specifications.
CKE wanted a robust system that would make managing the assets of their numerous restaurants easier and more efficient, which included the following requirements:
Providing autonomy for every franchise
Every branch should have access to digital assets so they can use it for their local marketing campaigns.
The organization
of assets
There must be a single platform where assets are well-structured and organized for easy access
Seamless sharing
and distribution
There had to be a way to obtain approved branded assets through a self-service portal, where multi-media files could be downloaded in different sizes and formats on the fly
Accessible brand
guidelines
Each franchisee must have an easily accessible solution to access the latest brand guidelines, logos, templates, icons and graphics.
Consistency and
brand compliance
It was essential for all franchisees to have access to high-quality media files, approved campaign assets and data.
Insights and
analytics
For proactive planning of future marketing campaigns, there had to be a way to collect insights and analytics from all franchises.
The Solution
With CKE’s needs and specifications in mind, IntelligenceBank created the CKE Digital Library which empowered CKE’s operations by making their approach to digital asset management more efficient and seamless.
Equipped with the bespoke CKE Digital Library, the CKE team is now able to find and use approved branded content faster with the power of advanced metadata, AI and automatic keyword tagging. All users can also convert image, video sizes and file types for use at the local level.
Effortless sharing of digital content from one single source of truth has enabled CKE to collaborate continuously between internal and external teams, including third party agencies, down to individual stores. The CKE Digital Library Hub also has a feature of adding comments on files that need revisions or further work so it gets fed back to the head office.
The Results
With a central location for approved logos, images, guidelines and more, CKE has now ensured that all stores and franchises offer a consistent customer experience and brand positioning across their entire network.
Their DAM platform has completely minimized the risk of local restaurants using unapproved designs, old logos or inconsistent marketing campaigns while making it easy for their team to use branding to attract more patrons.
Previously, when CKE worked with third party agencies without a Digital Asset Management system, they didn’t have much transparency around how their content was being utilized. Now with the CKE Digital Library, they can track content engagement, access a full audit trail and track who is using what, when and how. Instead of going in blind, CKE can now instantly run usage reports on stored digital assets and see how content is performing in the real world. This allows head office to assess the ROI on marketing spend and improve initiatives as required, based on live data.
Since implementing the CKE Digital Library, CKE has experienced:
IntelligenceBank’s solution to CKE’s challenge has provided them with a single yet powerful and comprehensive platform that not only stores assets but also optimizes their processes, allowing their teams to work more efficiently across the world.
