| Jack Box | |
| First: | 1951 (original) 1994 (current) |
| Creator: | Robert O. Peterson |
| Portrayer: | Dean Baker (1994–1999) Bob Thompson (1999–2004) John Glenn (2004–2014) David Tompkins (2014–present) Peter Sittig (puppet) |
| Voice: | Paul Winchell (1971-76) Rick Sittig (1994–2015) David Tompkins (2015–present) (English) Horacio Mancilla (Spanish) |
| Full Name: | Jack I. Box |
| Gender: | Male |
| Occupation: | Founder, CEO, and spokesman for the Jack in the Box fast food chain, owner of the Carnivores football team, U.S. Presidential candidate, former guitarist for Meat Riot |
| Family: | Unnamed father, Patty Box (mother) |
| Spouse: | Cricket Box (wife) |
| Children: | Jack Jr. (son), Jane (daughter), Jake (son) |
| Relatives: | Jim (cousin), Jacques (cousin), Joey (cousin), Joey, Jr. (first cousin once removed), Horatio Box (ancestor) |
Jack Box (full name Jack I. Box or simply known as Jack) is the primary mascot of the Jack in the Box fast food restaurant chain. In television commercials, he is the founder, CEO and ad spokesman for the chain. His appearance is that of a typical White male, with the exception of his spherical white head, blue dot eyes, conical black pointed nose and curvilinear red smile. He is most of the time seen wearing his trademark yellow clown cap and business suit.
The company has used the Jack Box mascot in its advertising since 1994 and has won a number of advertising awards for the long campaign.[1]
Prior to 1980, the chain used Jack as its symbol, which sat atop the drive-thru menus in the 1960s and early 1970s. Jack's head was also atop the large signs at each location. In 1980, the chain decided to establish a more "mature" image by introducing a wider variety of menu items and (most notably) discontinuing the use of Jack. A series of television commercials announced that "now we stand for great new food", to which the commercials showed the dramatic destruction of the notorious clown heads (most commonly through explosion, also dropping them from a crane and launching them like a rocket). Throughout the late 1980s to the 1990s, Jack in the Box tried to position itself as a premium fast food alternative, with varying results.
In 1993, a major food contamination crisis was linked to Jack in the Box restaurants. By 1994, a series of lawsuits and negative publicity took their tolls and pushed their corporate parent, Foodmaker Inc. to the verge of bankruptcy. In the short term, they decided to promote their initiatives on food safety. Management then approved a new guerilla advertising campaign created by Richard "Rick" Sittig, then working at the TBWA\Chiat\Day ad agency in Santa Monica, California. The concept brought back the original company mascot, Jack, but now in the form of a savvy and no-nonsense businessman who happened to have an enormous round clown head.[1]
A series of new commercials featured a new and more serious Jack with a smaller head and wearing a business suit (according to him, "thanks to the miracle of plastic surgery"). In the very first of these new commercials, he blew up the board of directors as retribution for his supposed destruction in 1980 (using the 7-note musical signature in its previous campaign as a tribute). The intent of the ad campaign was to prove to a wary public that the company was no longer the same restaurant chain plagued by the food safety scandal; since the commercials had a definite humorous element to them that undermined the alleged "retribution" that Jack was supposedly demonstrating, the public responded positively. Car antenna ornaments modeled after Jack's head became a mainstay of the restaurant chain's promotion for several years.[2]
The company's "biography" of him claims the following facts:
On February 1, 2009, a new advertising campaign began with a Super Bowl ad that showed Jack being struck by a bus outside his corporate office. Along with his second in command, Phil. He was walking down the street, stating that he wants the public to know about the fact that the public can order anything on his menu, anytime. He states "For instance, breakfast all day, or maybe a burg-." At that moment, a bus is seen to strike Jack head on, as onlookers cringe and his hat knocked off. The ad ends with Jack lying on the ground badly injured while the paramedics are being summoned. Viewers were then directed to visit the website hangintherejack.com in order to check on his condition.[3]
The next ad depicted Jack being checked into the hospital and being operated on as his heart stopped, as Doctor Robert Conely was talking about the a "midnight breakfast at Jack's" with Nurse O'Brien. It is also revealed that his large head did not fit into the CAT scan machine and that the doctors were using unprofessional equipment (Doctor Conely states at the end of the ad to give him a hot glue gun and a bonesaw).
The third ad then showed Jack in a coma and Phil volunteering to take his place at the company's head, despite Jack not being dead, he felt that he was close enough to death that he should prepare to step up. Dr. Conely even states that he might not live, all the while another assistant named Barbara is more positive about the situation, stating that Jack will recover.
The fourth and final ad showed Phil, after snapping his fingers, announcing that he was going to take over Jack in the Box. Jack, regaining awareness of his surrounding (albeit only listening and blurred vision), thinks to himself that Phil using most of his ideas is a good thing. However, Phil states that he intends to change the company name, to "Phil in the Box", going as far to hold up the future company logo. At that moment, Jack suddenly wakes up and begins throttling Phil, stating that he will not let the name change occur and stating that he has work to do, all the while demanding his pants. The words "Jack's Back" then appear on the screen.
Shortly after the announcement, the company got rid of the old Jack in the Box logo and introduced a newer and more modernized logo, along with a redesigned website. The overall campaign was noted for its unusually extensive (for the time) use of social media to gain viewer impressions at a lower cost than traditional media.[4] [5]