Advertising

An overview of Jack in the Box's advertising campaigns over the years.

1950s

Early newspaper advertisements in 1954 playfully presented the restaurant as a French restaurant one week, and a Spanish restaurant the next.

1960s

Jack in the Box hired the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in February 1967. One of their early commercials for the chain, which featured a family of nudists using the drive-thru, was met with controversy; three television stations in the Los Angeles area refused to air it.

1970s

Rodney Allen Rippy.

Television commercials in the early 1970s featured child actor Rodney Allen Rippy. In the commercials, Rippy was seen trying to wrap his mouth around the super-sized Jumbo Jack hamburger. The tag line "It's too big to eat!" (pronounced "It's too big-a-eat!") became a catchphrase. Another spot showed Rippy giggling while singing the song "Take Life a Little Easier," which was released as a single by Bell Records in the fall of 1973 in the wake of the commercial's popularity.

The Jack in the Box Bunch.

In the early 1970s, Jack in the Box introduced the Jack in the Box Bunch, a group of cartoon characters aimed at children. The characters were featured in animated commercials, print media, and merchandise.

Jack in the Box ended their relationship with Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1977 in favor of Wells, Rich, Greene.

1980s

Exploding Clown.

By the end of the 1970s, Jack in the Box restaurants were being put up for sale in increasing numbers. As a result, the chain announced that it would no longer compete for McDonald's target customer base of families with young children, and would instead attempt to attract older, more affluent "yuppie" customers with a higher-quality, more upscale menu. This change in direction was dramatically symbolized in the 1980 commercial Exploding Clown, in which a drive-thru menu adorned with the chain's longtime clown mascot Jack was exploded with dynamite. The commercial was a rousing success, with sales increasing by double digits. According to the firm Burke Marketing Research, it was the highest scoring fast-food commercial of all time.

Dan Gilvezan.

From 1981 to 1986, a series of television commercials featured Dan Gilvezan as a winsome spokesman who extolled the virtues of Jack in the Box's products. The character would frequently attempt to compare Jack in the Box's food to that of McDonald's and other chains, but to no avail (either the competition did not sell a similar product, or he would claim their version was not as good as Jack in the Box's), hence the slogan "There's No Comparison." A running gag in later commercials would feature characters asking him some variation of "Aren't you going to do a comparison?"

In October 1985, Jack in the Box dropped Wells, Rich, Greene in favor of HCM/Chicago. However, this relationship lasted less than a year, with Jack in the Box reassigning its account to Cohen & Johnson in September 1986.

1990s

Jack Box.

In 1994, the ad agency Chiat/Day was brought onboard to help rebrand the company, which was on the brink of bankruptcy in the wake of the 1992-1993 E. coli outbreak. A campaign spearheaded by creative director Rick Sittig reinvented the chain's former clown mascot Jack as Jack Box, the chain's fictitious founder and CEO. "I thought it would be fun and instead of just making him a clown you order through, to bring him back as the company founder and to treat him as you would treat any other company founder on TV, whether it's Lee Iacocca or Bill Gates," Sittig said in a 1997 interview. Depicted as a snarky, no-nonsense businessman with a large, white ping pong ball-like head, Jack was "reintroduced" in the 1994 commercial Jack's Back, in which he returns to Jack in the Box and blows up a boardroom as revenge for his 1980 explosion.

The campaign was highly successful and the chain rebounded in popularity. The symbolism of the boardroom explosion and reintroduction of Jack helped change public perception of the restaurant. "Even though it was all fiction, people said, 'OK, I guess there's a new guy running the place,' and customers started coming back," Sittig observed in 2008.

Election Ad.

Commercials featuring Jack Box tend to be lightly humorous and often involve Jack making business decisions about the restaurant chain's food products, or out in the field getting ideas for new menu items. Subsequent spots introduced viewers to his family, including his son Jack Jr. and wife Cricket.

Jack in the Box launched its website in 1996.

In 1997, Chiat/Day dropped Jack in the Box as a client in favor of Taco Bell, purportedly because the agency had a policy against representing competing fast food chains and Taco Bell was a much larger company. At the urging of Jack in the Box, Sittig formed his own ad agency, Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Co. (later renamed Secret Weapon Marketing), and continued producing Jack in the Box commercials.

The Meaty Cheesy Boys.

A popular 1997 commercial presented in the style of a music video featured the Spicy Crispy Chicks, a parody of the Spice Girls. The concept would be revisited to greater acclaim in 1999 with the Meaty Cheesy Boys, a takeoff on boy bands. Their popularity led to a live performance of their song "Ultimate Cheeseburger" at the Billboard Music Awards in December 1999 and a three-song CD sold at Jack in the Box.

Other notable commercials from this decade include The Visitor, which parodied the handheld camera style of the show COPS.

2000s

The Carnivores logo.

During the height of the initial XFL football league in early 2001, an ad campaign centered around the Carnivores, a fictional football team purchased by Jack Box which played against teams such as the Tofu Eaters and the Vegans.

A 2002 series of commercials featured Jack visiting real-life people with names that evoke competing fast food chains. In Ronald, a man named Ronald MacDonald compliments his food, leading Jack to truthfully claim "my burgers are so good, even Ronald MacDonald likes them!" Other ads in the series include Jack visiting "the home of the Voppers", a woman named Wendy, and a man named Jared from (a) subway.

Jack about to be hit by a bus.

Throughout the 2000s, the internet gained an increasingly larger role in Jack in the Box's advertising. Tie-in websites were created for the Meaty Cheesy Boys and Carnivores. MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook accounts were created for the brand, with posts written from the perspective of Jack. The 2009 ad campaign Hang in there Jack utilized the internet in a major way: after Jack was hit by a bus in a Super Bowl XLIII commercial, social media and a tie-in website continued the "storyline" of his recovery, anchored by three subsequent television commercials.

Bobblehead.

Some of Jack in the Box's advertising would prove controversial during this period. In 2001, PETA activists staged a small protest outside Jack in the Box headquarters in San Diego, "enraged by the new television commercial portraying vegetarians as wimpy opponents of the Carnivores." Anti-drug activists lambasted the 2005 commercial Bobblehead for allegedly depicting a "'clearly high' young man ordering 30 tacos."

Angus Diagram.

Jack in the Box's advertising would also result in lawsuits. In 2003, an aspiring commercial director sued @radical.media, a production company frequently hired by Secret Weapon Marketing, alleging the 2002 Jack in the Box commercial Stranded spoofing the 2000 film Cast Away infringed on a spec commercial he'd made. The court ruled his spec commercial was an unauthorized derivative work and therefore not entitled to copyright protection. In 2007, CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, sued Jack in the Box over a series of commercials that suggested their Angus beef comes from a cow's anus. The case, CKE Restaurant v. Jack in the Box, Inc., was eventually settled and dismissed, but the terms of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.

2010s

Puppet Jack.

Commercials in the early 2010s continued to push the envelope, with allusions to erections, sexting, and BDSM. Spots promoting Jack's Munchie Meal featured a puppet version of Jack speaking with a stoner-like inflection.

Jack in the Box officially parted ways with Secret Weapon Marketing in August 2015, ending the chain's decades-long relationship with Sittig. A marketing executive suggested that the ironic humor that had been a trademark of the company's advertising no longer jibed with the culture, and Jack had at times become "a little bit too sarcastic."

See also: 2015 soft reboot

Legendary.

David&Goliath became Jack in the Box's agency of record. Their first commercial for the chain, Legendary, kicked off a year-long series of commercials featuring Jack traveling the globe on a "legendary quest" for better ingredients. A later campaign featured Jack dressed as George Washington with a "Declaration of Delicious."

In a move to make the brand more relevant to Millennials, Jack was no longer portrayed as a snarky, "quintessentially Gen X" businessman, but more of a larger-than-life heroic explorer, and ads tended to be more positive and less edgy. One notable exception was the controversial 2018 spot Jack's Bowls.

Cricket's Cravings.

In 2016, Jack in the Box promoted its Brunchfast menu with an ambitious campaign centered around Cricket Box's pregnancy with the first-ever VR fast food commercial, a social media tie-in on Snapchat, and an in-person media event dubbed as a baby shower. However, the agency soon ceased featuring Jack's domestic life in ads.

Fuel House.

Gaming became more of a focus for the company. Jack in the Box became an official sponsor of the Dallas Fuel Overwatch esports team in 2017. An online animated series featuring Jack Box living with members of the team, Fuel House, debuted in 2019.

2020s

TikTok Jack.

In 2022, TBWA\Chiat\Day once again became Jack in the Box's agency of record, taking over from David&Goliath. The firms had previously worked together in the mid-1990s.

Throughout the 2020s, Jack in the Box's marketing has focused on Gen Z, with original social media content becoming a bigger priority. The brand joined TikTok in 2020, where it became the most engaged fast food brand on the service according to the agency Conscious Minds Studios, which handles the chain's social marketing. Initially, Jack in the Box's TikTok featured TikTok Jack, a different version of Jack Box, but the character was supplanted by the "real" Jack. An official Discord server, Jack's Late Night Discord, launched in July 2021 with a live performance by The Aquabats. "Unboxing Late Night Jack Tweets," a series of animated commercials featuring stories about Jack in the Box adapted from Twitter, debuted in August 2021.

Gamer Jack.

The chain has continued to court gamers, with regular Twitch streams featuring Gamer Jack, a VTuber version of Jack, and game modes in Fortnite. It has also become more overt in targeting cannabis users, with promotions centered around 4/20.

Jack with Jason Derulo.

During this era, Jack has been characterized as more of an influencer, often hanging out with celebrities like TikTok superstar Jason Derulo,, Snoop Dogg, and T-Pain in commercials. Marketing has leaned into the idea of Jack as a sex symbol, regularly acknowledging the fandom's "thirsty" comments and fanart, getting him into People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" issue (via an advertisement), and releasing a cheesecake calendar of the mascot. After a decade-long absence, his son Jack Jr. returned in social media videos in 2023, now portrayed as a college student, which the agency described as "[giving] the audience exactly what they craved, Jack being a daddy."

One campaign featured Jack reuniting with Mark Hamill, who had previously worked for the chain in the 1970s. A tie-in comic book provided backstory. Another campaign featured Paul Lieberstein, who played Toby Flenderson on The Office, playing a similarly-beleaguered HR representative.