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How Jack in the Box Turned Brand Haters Into Believers
Jack in the Box's 'Smash the Haters' is a hidden camera-style brand campaign launched in the United States in March 2024, created by TBWA\Chiat\Day and production studio DOMO, in which self-declared fast-food skeptics undergo blind taste tests of the new Smashed Jack burger and are filmed changing their opinions in real time.
The Smashed Jack itself arrived nearly two years in development. The product is a quarter-pound patty engineered for crisp smash burger-style edges, layered with thick pickle slices, grilled onion, and Jack in the Box's proprietary Boss Sauce. It is a deliberate departure from the brand's existing burger lineup and a direct answer to the smash burger trend reshaping quick-service restaurant menus across the United States. According to Investors Jackinthebox, the Smashed Jack soft-launched in early January 2024 without any paid marketing support — and sold nearly 70,000 units on its first day alone. The planned six-week soft launch period sold out in under two weeks, a result Jack in the Box's investor relations materials describe as the company's most successful product launch in recent memory.
'Smash the Haters' exists to give that product moment a public face. DOMO, the creative collaboration studio behind the films, drew from a pool of 16,000 applicants to identify genuine Jack in the Box detractors. Through multiple rounds of interviews and questionnaires, the pool was narrowed to thirty on-camera tasters representing the furthest end of the burger-loving, Jack-in-the-Box-hating spectrum. Participants were told they were taking part in a marketing research study — a controlled fiction that allowed director Jonathan Klein to capture unmediated, authentic reactions. When Jack Box, the brand's mascot, revealed himself as the architect of the experiment, the resulting surprise became the emotional and comedic centrepiece of the campaign. The Clapboard Score for 'Smash the Haters' is 69 out of 100.
TBWA\Chiat\Day identified a specific and measurable problem. Jack in the Box operates more than 2,200 restaurants concentrated primarily in the western United States, according to investors.jackinthebox.com, yet the brand carries a vocal contingent of disengaged or actively negative consumers. The strategic premise of 'Smash the Haters' is that this negativity is not rooted in the food itself but in assumption — and that the Smashed Jack, if experienced directly, could dismantle it.
The smash burger format had already demonstrated commercial urgency across the United States. Competitors including McDonald's, which operates approximately 13,559 domestic locations according to qsrmagazine.com, and Shake Shack, which built its entire premium positioning around the smashed patty technique, had either adopted or popularised the format at scale. Entering this space required Jack in the Box to do more than announce a product — it required the brand to prove it. The hidden camera format addressed that burden of proof directly by removing the advertiser from the equation and replacing them with the consumer's own unscripted verdict.
As reported by Muse by Clio, the campaign was framed in coverage as carrying a darkly comic, surveillance-tinged atmosphere — a deliberate tonal choice that separated it from the category's dominant register of aspirational food photography and cheerful lifestyle spots. The faux-research setting gave the films a procedural credibility that reinforced the authenticity of the tasters' reactions. According to Blog Mswresearch, consumer trust in peer reactions and real-world product demonstrations consistently outperforms scripted advertising in driving purchase intent — a dynamic the campaign's construction was built to exploit. The strategic intelligence here lies in making the media format, a fake study, inseparable from the message: this burger converts even the unconverted.
Jonathan Klein directed the 'Smash the Haters' films for Jack in the Box. Klein is the creative force behind DOMO's distinctive hidden camera-style brand work, and his directorial sensibility is central to the campaign's execution. Rather than staging reactions, Klein engineered the conditions for genuine ones — a distinction that required unusual production infrastructure and a casting process of significant scale.
DOMO managed the full production pipeline, including all project management, post and finishing services, original music exploration, direction, and casting, as documented in Clapboard's production records. The scale of the casting effort — 16,000 applicants screened down to thirty participants through structured interviews and questionnaires — reflects the studio's commitment to finding tasters whose reactions would be categorically unperformable. Andre Stringer served as Executive Creative Director, with Rani Melendez as Managing Partner and Executive Producer. Jeff O'Keefe was Creative Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, and Jake Roberts served as Senior Art Director. Alison Bayer Brown was Chief of Staff and Executive Producer, with Erik Press as Producer and Greg Caruso as Production Supervisor.
Klein made a deliberate framing decision that reflects the campaign's structural intelligence: each taster was shot with more headspace than conventional interview framing would dictate. The choice was purposeful. As Klein explained directly in campaign materials, the additional headspace was designed to accommodate graphics and leave room for new creative ideas to develop in post-production — a technical decision that simultaneously communicates openness and anticipation in the frame itself. The original music exploration overseen by DOMO adds a further tonal layer, supporting the documentary register without tipping into parody. As reported by Muse by Clio, the execution carries the atmospheric quality of a surveillance film, an association the production team appeared to embrace rather than resist. Production credits beyond those listed here are not fully documented in public sources.
The Smashed Jack produced verifiable commercial results before 'Smash the Haters' even launched. According to investors.jackinthebox.com, Jack in the Box sold nearly 70,000 Smashed Jack burgers on the first day of the product's soft launch in January 2024, without any paid advertising support. The six-week soft launch window sold out in fewer than two weeks, and investor relations materials describe the Smashed Jack as the company's most successful product launch on record.
No verified performance data specifically attributable to the 'Smash the Haters' campaign itself — including view counts, earned media value, or brand sentiment shifts — is publicly available at the time of publication. No awards recognition for the campaign has been confirmed across Cannes Lions, the Effies, One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC databases.
Structurally, however, the campaign demonstrates several characteristics associated with high-performing food and drink advertising in the United States. The casting depth — 16,000 applicants to produce thirty on-camera tasters — is a credibility investment that functions as visible editorial rigour. The faux-research format creates a persuasion architecture in which the consumer, rather than the brand, delivers the verdict. As reported by Muse by Clio, the 'Big Brother'-style surveillance framing gave the work a distinctive tonal signature that trade press treated as genuinely novel within the quick-service restaurant category. Ryan Ostrom, Chief Marketing Officer at Jack in the Box, oversaw the campaign's go-to-market strategy, according to News Designrush. The Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its creative premise with discipline and achieves clear product-launch coherence, though its reach and measurable cultural impact remain undocumented.
'Smash the Haters' is a hidden camera-style campaign launched by Jack in the Box in the United States in March 2024. Created by TBWA\Chiat\Day and production studio DOMO, and directed by Jonathan Klein, it films real brand skeptics undergoing blind taste tests of the Smashed Jack burger and recording their genuine, unscripted reactions on camera.
TBWA\Chiat\Day created the campaign, with DOMO serving as the creative collaboration studio. Jonathan Klein directed the films. Andre Stringer was Executive Creative Director, Rani Melendez was Managing Partner and Executive Producer, and Jeff O'Keefe served as Creative Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, according to Clapboard's production records.
DOMO and TBWA\Chiat\Day sourced participants from a pool of 16,000 applicants. Multiple interviews and questionnaires reduced that group to thirty on-camera tasters selected to represent the most committed end of the burger-loving, Jack-in-the-Box-hating spectrum, ensuring the reactions captured on film were categorically authentic rather than performed.
Jack in the Box sold nearly 70,000 Smashed Jacks on the first day of the product's January 2024 soft launch, with no paid advertising, according to investors.jackinthebox.com. The planned six-week soft launch sold out in under two weeks. Investor materials describe it as the brand's most successful product launch on record.
The Clapboard Score for 'Smash the Haters' is 69 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that executes its hidden camera premise with clear discipline and strong product-launch coherence. No verified awards recognition across Cannes Lions, the Effies, One Show, D&AD, the Clios, or the Webby Awards has been confirmed for the campaign.
TBWA\Chiat\Day returned as Jack in the Box's agency of record in 2022, according to restaurantdive.com, launching that relationship with the 'Return of Mark Hamill' campaign. 'Smash the Haters' extends the agency's approach of deploying humour and character-driven storytelling to reposition Jack in the Box within the competitive United States quick-service restaurant market.
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