Jack in the Box has a new chicken sandwich, and that means its mascot and Martha Stewart are going to fight, and, look, I don’t know, just watch it:
Super Bowl commercials 2018: Jack in the Box is going to fight Martha Stewart, and America’s rivers will run red with blood
hashtag this is something that will fascinate America for years, so start tweeting about brands
I have loads of thoughts about this commercial, including:
- Wait, that’s not the right voice for the Jack in the Box
- They changed actors, didn’t they
- I didn’t think this would disturb me, but I’m extremely mad online
- Was it a salary dispute? Did they stiff someone asking for his rightful compensation as the voice of a brand and come up with this imposter?
- I was going to write “this is like Alec Baldwin getting stiffed by the movie studios when he asked for too much money to play Jack Ryan,” except that somehow turned into Harrison Ford taking over the role, which was probably better for Patriot Games, really.
- That turned into Ben Affleck taking over the role, though, so who’s the real winner? Not the Jack Ryan franchise, that’s for sure.
- That was the end of the Jack Ryan brand, and it’s never coming back (foreshadowing).
- But back to the fake Jack in the Box actor. Everyone agrees this is total crap, right?
- That voice had been a part of our subconscious brand database for years. He’s like our uncle. That voice would bail us out of prison if we were arrested on an outstanding warrant. Uncle Jack, always there when you need 8,000 calories and/or to be bailed out of jail.
Now there’s some dumb voice pretending he’s Jack, when he’s not. No one involved in the above commercial has committed more fraud than the person voicing Jack in the Box in it. No one. Not even the person convicted for felony conspiracy.
Apparently, this happened a long time ago, but the @jackintheboxcommercialupdates account that I followed several years ago suddenly went dormant, and I was in the dark. But this voice is stupid, and I want you all to know this.
A little investigation suggests that there are reasons for all this.
He’s famous in the industry for his triple payout, making money as the owner of the ad agency who produced all the spots, the voice of Jack in all radio and tv commercials, AND the director who shot everything. Smart business man!
Legend.
NOTE: Dick Sittig has since changed his name to Rick. But when he was my boss, his name was Dick.
A danged legend. But Jack in the Box switched ad agencies, which means that Dick wasn’t going to be the Jack in a Box anymore. It didn’t make sense that the owner of the ad agency would keep voicing the character that he invented after the company spurned him. Nuts to that.
And then the new agency kept the same character. They just made it less funny and added a dumb new voice. Money well spent, really.
Is the commercial good? Not really. It needs more Ted Berg, for one thing. For another, it misses the point of the original ad campaign, where it was an unspoken and omnipresent absurdity that the little clown head from the top of your antenna was suddenly the CEO of a multinational corporation. This is just a guy with a different clownhead voice getting into a contrived, unfunny feud with Stewart.
Also, why does this commercial get to use a bleep when the Febreze commercial had to say the word “bleep?” Does this prove that the Febreze commercial thought saying the word “bleep” was funnier than an actual bleep? Cowardice at worst, egregious miscalculation at best.
Is this commercial worth $7.7 million?
Probably not, considering it’s not funny, but there’s a slight chance that this will capture the attention of people who respect the brands and Stewart, so it’s too early to say.
The voice ticks me off, though. At this point, make a new mascot. Go with the Jack in the Box bear, who roams around, tearing into the cars and houses of different neighborhoods because he can smell Jack in the Box.
The official mascot is dead. It was a good run.
It’s an insult to our intelligence to think we wouldn’t notice.
Could go for some curly fries, though.
I’ve always wondered what it is about their shape that make them taste different, but I guess we’ll never know.
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