“Goals? I know a thing or two. After all, I’m a CEO.” -Jack Box

Between 2016 and 2021, Jack in the Box’s market share had fallen by 12%--a time when most competitors were experiencing share growth or flatness. At a consumer level, the brand was lost, it was out of touch with consumers and had lost its voice in cultural conversations[1, 2].

The brief was daunting: return a once-legendary brand to cultural prominence in a two-month limited-time-only (LTO) product campaign for chicken strips and french toast sticks.

The objectives:

Revive Jack’s cultural prominence via earned attention

Increase social content engagement

Increase sales of LTO categories: chicken & breakfast

Increase same store visits (foot traffic)

We needed a brand campaign wolf in a LTO sheep’s clothing–one that would re-establish its cultural notoriety as well as sell products. And it started with Mark Hamill: Jack’s unruly former employee ready to disrupt culture.

“The force is strong with my curly fries.” - Jack Box

THE IDEA: The Return of Mark Hamill

What better way to bring back fan favorite items than by bringing back a fan favorite employee? Someone who epitomized the never-say-die spirit of Jack. Someone adored by consumers young and old. A literal Jedi Knight. Mark was the creative manifestation of our insight and the catalyst needed to amplify and take Jack’s legend to new heights. He was the ambassador we’d been searching for whose real, legendary Jack in the Box story would connect with the younger consumers we were aiming to recruit as well as the Gen X core consumer he represented[3]. A partner with the cultural influence to attract people to our LTO’s and begin returning the brand to cultural prominence. The ultimate Jedi move.

“Be a curly fry.” -Jack Box

Jack’s core consumers are Gen Xers who love the brand and remember it from their youth. But they don’t drive culture at scale, young people do. To revive the brand we needed to connect with a new generation.

We call them the Unruly Ones[3]: the arbiters of culture and conversation who aren’t afraid to do things their own way. They’re younger (average age 26), deeply social on platforms like Tiktok (198 index), Reddit (231 index) and Twitter (171 index) and heavily influenced by celebrity/pop culture (268 index), making influencer campaigns a great opportunity.

Our audience was designed to represent the key passions and attitudes of our younger target, while simultaneously appealing to interests shared by our core. Given their Star Wars affinity (152 index), Mark Hamill was the glue bringing it all together. A true Both-And strategy connecting Jack’s past with its future.

Mark Hamill was the hero of the campaign (August - September). We deployed a true 360 campaign, with Mark and Jack Box taking center stage across screens big (TV, CTV) and small (Mobile, Social). Beyond our product-forward films, we created made-for-social content, debuting on TikTok and Reddit to reach our younger cord-cutting consumers. Finally, Mark further drove awareness and interest by sharing behind the scenes content on his social handles (~13.9M followers)[4] and taking exclusive press interviews.

To further connect with our Unruly Ones, we tapped into one of their passions, comics and animations (247 index)[3], and created The Return of Mark Hamill, a comic detailing the (mostly) true story of Mark’s early years at Jack in the Box and the road that led these two legends back together. It was available on ShopJackInTheBox.com, DriveThruComics.com and shared via dramatic reading by comic book influencer, Comicstorian.

"I'm all about results. And curly fries." - Jack Box

The cultural impact of Mark Hamill on the campaign was undeniable.

Earned Attention: Coverage across media outlets including segments on Good Morning America, Entertainment Tonight and People Magazine[5].

Media impressions (earned): over 1.3 billion[5]

Social Content Engagement: Engagement rates 2-3x higher than benchmark across priority social platforms (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).[6]

Mark’s influence also carried over to sales during the two-month promotional window.

Sales of LTO categories: Increased sales by 5% versus the previous window. Chicken and breakfast (the product categories within the campaign) increased by 17.8% and 9% respectively. 80% of year over year sales increases were driven by those two categories alone[7].

Same store visits (foot traffic): Custom media studies attributing creative exposure to store visits showed a visitation rate increase of 154% over the previous LTO window[8].