Jack in the Box leans into culture to punch above its weight, and as 4/20 quickly approached Jack in the Box saw their opportunity to commemorate the annual celebration across the cannabis community. Leaning into the sentiment of the day around spontaneity of “raiding the fridge for those last-minute cravings” Jack in the Box would return their crowd favorite Pineapple Express shake.
However, a larger marketing platform was needed to maintain visibility for the product and brand, and the cannabis community have begun to shift away from the spontaneity of the day and plan more. After all, 39% of cannabis consumer request PTO ahead of 4/20.
As 4/20 became a planned personal holiday, what if Jack in the Box met people as they prepared for their holiday?
With niche communities sensitive to intrusive brands looking for profit and the 4/20 holiday saturated with other food brands offering seasonal digital promotions, Jack needed to break the mold while maintaining authenticity within the cannabis community to create momentum behind the digital exclusive promotion.
Enter WeedMaps.
WeedMaps is a pioneer in the cannabis marketing industry. They’ve connected consumers with dispensaries since the early days of recreational marijuana use when legal restrictions prevented more widespread marketing.
However, after considering the seamless contextual fit of the Jack in the Box product and campaign creative, WeedMaps made a unique exception to allow Jack in the Box into the platform as their first ever non-cannabis partner.
In the week leading up to 4/20, Jack in the Box built a program to be front-and-center on the April Maps platform (site and app) with highly visible homepage-header and banner ads. We created an organic storefront for Jack on the WeedMaps site, similar to that of a dispensary, to gather traffic and provide more information on the product and pop-up promotion. We also launched paid influencer content to seed intrigue around the experience.
On 4/20, our creative and landing page switched to reveal the location of the pop-up food truck within each market sending foot traffic to the experiential site in real life. The site also promoted a digital exclusive promotion featuring the shake for $4.20 in the app.
As added value, WeedMaps promoted the partnership using their social handles across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The organic social postings were crucial in lending WeedMaps’ trusted voice to the Jack brand and campaign.
Visitors to the Weedmaps platform couldn’t get enough of the partnership. During launch week, click-thru-rates were more than 3x WeedMaps benchmarks. When the campaign concluded, nearly 29K clicks drove visitors to the Jack in the Box digital storefront, exceeding expectations by nearly 250%.
As added value, WeedMaps social posts generated 75K impressions with an engagement rate of nearly 10%. The campaign gained earned media exposure across publications such as Digiday and Insider, directly highlighting the first-to-market partnership with WeedMaps.
When the dust settled, Jack had realized the highest sales week on 1st party ordering platforms in company history during campaign launch week.
