Keeping Things Light With Ad Man Rick Sittig

Not many marketers would have looked at Jack in the Box’s E. coli outbreak of 1993 and thought, “how can we keep this light and move on?” But that’s exactly what Rick Sittig did. Jack in the Box’s E. coli outbreak hospitalized 171 customers and resulted in four deaths.

“Since the outbreak of food-poisoning from hamburger sold at Jack in the Box outlets here in mid-January left two children dead, the stock of the chain's parent company, Foodmaker Inc., has dropped more than 30 percent,” reported the New York Times from Seattle on February 6, 1993 in an article entitled “Jack in the Box’s Worst Nightmare.” “The 60 Jack in the Box restaurants in the state have been barraged by anonymous telephone callers accusing them of being baby killers. Customers are scarce. And local newspapers have carried advertisements by lawyers offering to represent poisoning victims.”

Suffice to say, the outlook for the company’s future was bleak. Sittig, founder and creative director of Santa Monica-based Secret Weapon Marketing, saw an opportunity. And with that Jack, the wisecracking, fictional CEO, was born.

The Jack character appeared in numerous advertisements in a concerted effort to get rid of the old and bring in the new. In one of the brand’s most popular advertisements at that time, Jack blows up the Jack in the Box boardroom to force the company to start afresh. Did Jack in the Box actually lay off the company’s board members? No. But the advertisements seemed to satiate customers.

“Based on my experience with Jack in the Box, I have a pretty specific strategy for dealing with crisis,” says Sittig, who believes that there’s two ways to deal with a crisis—and only one of them works. “One strategy is to ignore talking about the crisis and hope that overtime it will go away. That doesn’t work. There’s a perception left in the consumer's mind that there’s a problem and that will stay in their mind until the company comes up with a new narrative.”

So create a new narrative is exactly what Sittig did. No longer was Jack in the Box a dark story, but a funny and in-your-face mascot who would tell you how it is—or so it seemed.

“The second strategy is to address the crisis as sincerely and transparently as you can. Though we live in an age where transparency is an idea that everyone likes to promote, it doesn’t work either,” says Sittig. “In fact, it guarantees more scrutiny and invite more questions. The press and public will ask, ‘What steps have you taken? How do you know it’ll never happen again?’ It reaffirms the existing narrative that there’s a problem.”

If ignoring the problem doesn’t work, and if tackling the problem head on by fessing up doesn’t work, what’s left? According to Sittig, the best thing a company facing a crisis can do is create a new narrative in a lighthearted, charming manner. Doing so, says Sittig, sends a message to consumers and the media that things have changed, but without it being too serious or having to divulge too many details.

“I’d suggest Chipotle create a new narrative, too,” says Sittig. “Jack had a new CEO come in, get rid of current management, thereby addressing the situation. Of course, there actually was no new CEO, he was a fictional clown character. But you get credit for acknowledging the situation without inviting seriousness. I think Chipotle would be wise to also take that path. They haven’t really addressed the issue and their sales haven’t recovered.”

Whether you agree with Sittig’s methods or not, the break from convention is undeniable, and something to consider when managing an obstacle of one’s own.