Objectives

Jack in the Box’s entire TikTok strategy is to grow their cult-like following by serving them exactly what they crave — entertaining content, one-to-one brand interaction, humor, and a few choice risky moves. So when it came to TikTok, our goal was simple: have fun with the audience. Oh, and elevate Jack in the Box to be the most engaged QSR brand on the platform. 

To achieve this we knew we needed to accomplish a few things first.

1. Create content tailored to specific Jack’s audience’s interests 
2. Meet the fan’s insatiable appetite for funny content at a high volume 
3. Fuel audience engagement with purpose made content and one-to-one interactions. 

We pivoted away from promotional content and focused on participatory entertainment that made Jack in the Box fans feel seen.  Jack in the Box is associated with so many fan interests and behaviors — from late nights, 420 sessions, fan art, and trending moments pop culture — we knew we had an authentic way in and just needed to get started.

Strategy and Execution

TikTok is a creator space, so we designed a brand page that felt like a creator page. Starting in January 2023, we developed a new “Always On” content model built for TikTok with a core creative studio that operated more like a late night sketch comedy show than an agency and partnered with a rotating roster of creators. This helped us serve fans interest-based content at scale, ranging from scripted entertainment to one-to-one fan engagements, to creator-led and real-time reactive content. 

We first identified categories where Jack in the Box could authentically show up. Lucky for us, Jack fans have some pretty relatable interests like:

• 420 Humor (“The Night Before Dankmas”)
• Fan Art  (“Fan Art Stash”)
• Late Night Humor (“I Didn’t Even Realize”)
• Pop Culture Moment (“Yes Chef!”)

Once we got a feel for what content fans liked, we had to do it at scale.

• We identified over 1200 unique trends for co-creation over several months 
• Produced hundreds of original pieces of content 

But our biggest opportunity on TikTok was audience participation. 

• We responded directly to fans, not just in the comments, but with original content too. (Jack Reacts)
• Community engagement led to our most viral content where we turned Jack into a father because the fans kept calling him daddy. (Daddy link)
• Fans even created UGC parodies of our content that went viral on their channels.

All of this was integral to posting trends and relevant content at peak virality, allowing Jack in the Box to show up natively to the platform while staying true to the Jack in the Box brand.

Results

Since January 2023, the Always On content model has been the key to Jack’s success on TikTok and across all Jack in the Box social channels. We accomplished our goal. By July, Jack had become the number 1 most engaged QSR brand on TikTok, and the numbers were impressive.

In just 9 months (Jan - Sept) Jack in the Box’s TikTok hit record numbers.

• Fastest Growing QSR Brand on TikTok
• +78.34% increase in follower growth (from 785,000 followers to 1.4 million)
• 6.9 Million Likes across all videos since January 1st. 
• +10.78% Avg Engagement Rate (with some videos hitting 20% or higher). Avg QSR ER:  3.03% 
• 77.6 Million Total Views
• Hundreds of Thousands of Bookmarks (yes, ads to be watched again later)
• Curated over 1,200 Individual Trend-Based Opportunities for Content Creation
• Created over 260 Published Videos (and hundreds more on the cutting room floor 😅)

Our fans on TikTok hit some major numbers too. 

• Some fan comments reached up to 40k likes themselves
• Fan-generated parody content (UGC) went viral like this and this. 

While this effort was largely designed for TikTok, its impact was a significant halo driver for the brand.

• #1 Most Engaged Brand on Instagram Reels
• +8.5% Avg Engagement Rate (Avg QSR ER:  1.86%)
• 46.4 Million Total Views
• +7.8% Increase to In-Store Sales

Media