Executive Vice President & Chief Customer & Digital Officer, JACK IN THE BOX INC
Backstage with Jack in the Box || Interviewed by Intuit SMB MediaLabs
We went backstage with senior leaders at our Marketing Leadership Summit in Cannes, hosted at Influential Beach. Some of our ...
About Ryan Ostrom
Ryan Ostrom, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer and Digital Officer at Jack in the Box, has discussed the company's marketing strategy and digital transformation in several interviews from 2022 to 2025. He stated that the company's marketing strategy is centered on making the brand "more craved" by being culturally relevant, authentic, visible, easy, and distinctive. Ostrom emphasized the importance of maintaining a consistent brand voice across all digital and social channels, including TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter, noting that some brands "miss it because their voice isn't consistent." He also highlighted the shift toward using customer data for personalized one-to-one marketing, saying the company is building the systems and processes to make that data actionable. Ostrom has described Jack in the Box as a late-night brand, with 30% of sales occurring after 10:00 PM, and said the company targets that audience with edgy marketing. He noted that the company has eliminated legal review from its social media content process to be more authentic and real. Ostrom discussed the company's use of AI for tasks such as writing emails, generating taglines, and creating visual content, while cautioning that brands must find the right balance to avoid losing their "soul and passion." He also addressed the company's expansion plans, stating that Jack in the Box aims to enter Chicago and Florida next, with New York targeted for approximately three years out.
Transcript (25 segments)
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Taran King0:09
Hi, my name is Taran King. I'm head of product for SMV Media Labs, which is SMV's New Media Network.
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Ryan Ostrom0:17
And I'm Ryan Ostrom, Chief Marketing Officer for Jack in the Box.
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Taran King0:19
Ryan, it's a pleasure to interview you. I'm Californian born and raised, so this brand is very near and dear to me. To start us off, you know obviously CMO has so many things that they're responsible for. I wanted to talk a little bit about Jack in the Box's strategy given the trends going right now, obviously like AI and things like that. Could you share a little bit of your guys' current marketing strategy for this year?
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Ryan Ostrom0:45
Yeah, so our current marketing strategy is all about making the brand more craved, which is more culturally relevant, authentic, visible, easy, distinctive. And everything we do, we really try to make the brand more craved. And the more components we can hit on our marketing, the better. And it's key this day and age because marketing is changing so much. It used to be simpler, easier, there's only three or four channels. Now there's like 350 to a billion channels. Trying to figure out how you talk to the right guest at the right time, even leveraging social and social content. It's just by having a really solid marketing strategy that the whole team can rally around, it allows us to create really good, I think, branded content, ownable content, and stand out within our marketplace.
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Taran King1:30
Very cool. So you guys are well known for campaigns that are outside of the box, funny. There's so many I can think over the years. I mean obviously the Munchies most recently with Ice Cube, I thought that was very cool. With campaigns like these that are so innovative, how do you measure the success? How do you figure out the impact, what worked, what didn't work? Is it region specific? Could you share a little bit about that?
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Ryan Ostrom1:53
Yeah, I mean the thing about being a marketer is you get a lot of people ask you how do you measure, how do you measure? It's sales. I mean yeah, everything is driven by sales and transactions. Am I driving more visits? Are those visits current guests or new guests? We do look at that, but it's visits, transactions, and sales that drives everything we do. Nothing's ever changed. And so when we look at campaigns like Ice Cube, we look at Snoop Dogg, or even Ryan Reynolds, some of the unique activations, we really go back to that crave strategy. Does it fit us? Is it authentic? And then post campaign we say, did it drive the right guests? And everything we do we have to have a balance because in fast food you have value guests, you have premium guests. And we try to balance that out. We don't look too expensive, but we also got to bring in the... we want to make sure the premium guests are buying the premium items like the Ice Cube Munchy Meal, but we want the value guest to feel like I can still get two tacos for under two bucks. And that balance is what we do really well in every single marketing message out there.
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Taran King2:49
Yeah, it's all about... So we talked a little bit about the campaigns that you guys have ran, and innovation is key to it, right? So many, especially like Super Bowl and things like that, just over the years there's so many I can think of personally. You talked a little bit about measuring the sales and things like that, but in terms of ideation process, how do you keep them so engaging and new? Is it an agency collab? What is that process?
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Ryan Ostrom3:14
I think what it is is we have a lot of people who are born and bred in this brand. You said it, you're a California person. I'm an Arizona person. I grew up on Jack in the Box too. My whole team has lived or breathed Jack in the Box in their lives. And by having a team that really... they write the briefs, they understand the food, they develop the food. It allows us to create that authentic kind of aspect of the brand. Now it's never easy. I mean for every one or two great campaigns we execute, we always have a couple that like, ah man, we just missed the mark. But it's because of that passion we're able to work closely with our agency partners like Shy and Cara or media and our creative to bring these stories to life, bring the messaging to life. And we live and breathe this. I mean I love Jack in the Box and I feel that we can really bring that message to life authentically more than anyone else because we lived it. So right, and it's key to the success. I mean when I think about other competitor brands and the marketing that they have, I don't think anyone really holds a candle in terms of the unique messaging that comes across in these campaigns. And it's pretty consistent since... I think what was it, 1999 when that whole brand shift happened?
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Taran King4:21
Yeah, it's like mid 90s to late 90s.
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Ryan Ostrom4:23
It shifted where they brought Jack back, they brought that edginess back. And we try to relive that in what we do now. Times have changed, so we got to be cautious on how we make Jack edgy. But this is where those partnerships with Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube and even bringing back Mark Hamill, who used to work in a Jack in the Box... yeah, before he made it famous, Mark Hamill worked in a Jack in the Box. He ended up getting fired because he was impersonating Jack on the drive-thru when people would come through. So we brought him back for a campaign and said, hey, you can relive your Jack experience. And this authenticness is what's key, but then also doing it in a way that keeps that edge for the brand and that late night vibe that we do really well is key.
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Taran King5:10
Right. So consumer behavior, you had mentioned that there used to be five mechanisms, now there's 350. I think it's something like you get bombarded with over 500,000 ads a day as a consumer. I know the creative process is key here, but are there any changes? I think you alluded to it a little bit, some of the celebrity type deals that you guys have. Is that a shift in consumer behavior that has led you down more of that path?
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Ryan Ostrom5:33
I think what it is, and a lot of brands do this really well, but it's just about how do you break through that clutter and how do you do things a little different? Because you don't want to just be a billboard on the side of the road that no one notices. So even when we do billboards, how do you stand out? When you do social posts, how do you create authentic content that brings it to life? And everything we do, we really want to be that culturally relevant, distinctive brand. And we try to do that the best we can. I think the other big change that's going on though, especially in QSR, is the digital space. I mean not only in the social media, but acquiring customer data, using that data for one more purchase. Knowing that you live next to this store and you haven't been in the next two weeks, I want to bring you in with the right offer at the right time and bring you in. And that's just also shifting our messaging even from traditional channels to more one-to-one personalized messaging, which is going to be the key of the future in QSR.
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Taran King6:24
So it sounds like data is a big piece of that then. Is that something like first party data you guys have? Anything?
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Ryan Ostrom6:32
I think it's something we got to get better at. We do. Personally, I think the industry has evolved. Some of the bigger players have moved faster. We are on that process of we have to build the systems in place, we have to have the database conversations, we have to say how do you access that, use the right tools to actually reach it. Because data sitting there that's unreachable is worthless. So by having our ability to use that data to drive that extra visit, finding the right partners to do it, that's we're building that skill set and that process right now internally. And yes, we have less names than some of our competitors, but we're starting to realize the power of using those names week after week and also creating unique experiences that get people to download your app and be a brand handraiser for Jack in the Box.
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Taran King7:16
Gotcha. So we talked a little bit about data, but I do want to touch upon AI. Obviously it's such a hot topic. It can be used in so many ways from creative to data and all these things. Is it a part of Jack in the Box's strategy right now?
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Ryan Ostrom7:30
AI is always finding its way into everything. And I think AI is... it's funny because AI now is like the buzzword, but AI's always been there. Like recommendation engines and things like that is AI. It's artificial intelligence that helps the guest, you recommend certain products. And so we've been doing that. But I think it's now the next levels. How do you use AI to write better emails? How do you use it to... we've actually used AI to figure out some taglines even for our commercials, because we're like, hey, let's just throw in something because we have this new product, what's a good name for this product? It creates really good names too. And so we're starting to figure out some basic ways to use AI. But I think really using it on your data, the targeted machine learning, that is where we're going to go. And that's nothing new, it's just now the buzzword. It's always been there, it's behind the scenes. I think we have opportunity to further push that. But where I really see it is embedding itself in marketing more and how to make quicker decisions, quicker ads. Even using AI to say, hey, we shoot a lot of product, and so we can create a tool that actually allows us to create the bundles faster, quicker, visually. Hey, that might be a really good way to save money because I don't have to go shoot all the time. So these are things we see AI being able to enhance or embed themselves within the current process of marketing at Jack in the Box.
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Taran King8:43
Gotcha. So you talked about using it a little bit in the creative process and various pieces. Do you have any concerns around authenticity if it becomes too intrinsic? You guys do mean you always want to keep that emotion and you still want to be able to control the strategy and how you execute and how you leverage it?
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Ryan Ostrom8:57
I think we're always going to try to be authentic, and I think that's key to who we are. So we want to fine line of where we use AI, how it comes to life. And it was funny, I was talking to another group and they said you can create AI art, but does it really have the soul? And you kind of see sometimes it doesn't. That's what you don't want to lose is the soul and the passion. And so we have to figure out where it embeds and where it works. But I do think if you don't figure out where AI will work, you'll be left behind. And so you have to figure out the right places without forgoing who you are as a brand and how you make the right decisions for the right reasons.
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Taran King9:32
Such important points. I mean, adding to it, we face the same with the data we have. This could be one of the challenges around AI, but if there any other main challenges in this dynamic landscape, things we want to learn at Can here?
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Ryan Ostrom9:47
Well, I honestly, the conversation I have is there's too many media channels. There's just too many. And no one has unlimited money. So as a marketer, yes, you have mixed modeling, but mixed modeling is always backwards seeking. So how do you do forward seeking media decisions that allows you to be quicker, faster, in real time? Because you have so many social channels, you have like 500 TV stations, you have so many different digital buys. I can buy within even out of home. What is the right channel to drive the sale is always going to be the question. And I think our money's now spread so thin. Where do you put the next dollar? Or where do I have to shift dollars to? And I think the traditional ways of looking at that are a little outdated, and we have to be faster, quicker, and more real time of how to optimize our media strategy.
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Taran King10:37
In the context of social, right? There's influencers, micro influencers, and that kind of thing. Is that a space that Jack plays in?
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Ryan Ostrom10:43
Yeah, we play across the board. I mean, some could say the celebrities like Ice Cube and Snoop are influencers. They're influencers all the way down to micro influencers as well. And we do something a little different. You know, I grew up... it's weird, I've somehow been in social for 20 years. It's weird to say that. I'm dating myself. But social was just coming out when I started becoming a marketer. And I was like one of the first brands at Reebok to partner with Facebook, and one of the first brands to help create content on YouTube and do things when I was at Kenar Craft and D like we did a lot in social. I think the world of influencers has just grown. And instead of me saying, hey, I want you to talk about my brand a specific way, we try to really curate who the influencers are first, people who really trust their brand, and then give them free reign to talk about who we are in their lives. And so we more say, how does Jack participate in your life as an influencer? Versus me saying, hey, I want you to do this about my brand, because it's not authentic, it's not real, it's not ownable. And so by being that authentic self and just putting really thin guardrails, yes, it opens up potential risk. We've seen that risk in the industry. But by choosing the right influencers, the right people, I think we're able to really discuss our brand and who our brand is and how we impact late night or mornings or your daily routines in an authentic way.
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Taran King12:10
Gotcha. Awesome. It's been great speaking with you. I've learned a lot. And again, this brand is near and dear to me.
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Ryan Ostrom12:18
Well, I mean, it could get better than you know, speaking here on the beach. So I appreciate the invite and enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for your time.
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Taran King12:23
All right.