Who: Canadian casual dining brand Jack Astor’s and owner SIR Corp., with The Garden for strategy and creative; Cairns Oneil for media; and Hype PR managing influencers.
What: “Annoyingly High Food Standards,” a digital-first campaign targeting the casual dining brand’s younger audience and informed by interviews with real kitchen staff, who explained how Jack Astor's high standards means a lot of hard work for them.
What: “Annoyingly High Food Standards,” a digital-first campaign targeting the casual dining brand’s younger audience and informed by interviews with real kitchen staff, who explained how Jack Astor's high standards means a lot of hard work for them.
When & Where: The campaign launched Jan. 15 and is running through Feb. 24. The chain is focusing on a younger demographic with this campaign, and has focused the buy on digital and social channels where the campaign's more “gritty” execution better translates. That means Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Reddit, supported by OOH and communication across Jack’s owned and operated channels.
Why: “We wanted to tell the story of Jack Astor’s food in a way that truly stood out—one that felt authentic, real and completely unique to us,” said Anesie Johnson, VP of marketing at SIR Corp, adding that the story was “long overdue.”
This meant pulling back the curtain and offering a glimpse inside the casual dining chain’s kitchens, while bringing forward some of the very real complaints that Jack Astor’s employees voiced in interviews with The Garden.
“Jack’s was brave enough to spill real employee complaints, and we sought out ways to cleverly twist them into an end product benefit,” explained Lindsay Eady, creative director at The Garden. “They take extra steps and care to make food the right way, the annoying way, and that makes all the difference in the final quality.”
How: A key consideration for the agency was to find a way to deliver the message that felt “authentic” while avoiding the common QSR tropes about the quality of their food. “Quality stories can easily blend into the background noise,” said Johnson.
To achieve that goal, The Garden skipped the use of professional actors, opting instead to enlist actual SIR Corp. kitchen employees, ranging from pantry and line cooks, through to kitchen managers and even the brand’s culinary director.
Those individuals star in a 30-second spot developed with input from a group of content creators and specifically crafted with a behind-the-scenes look and feel to give consumers a look into the effort that goes into each of the chain’s signature dishes, from chicken fingers to burgers and nachos.
And we quote: “Just because some of our signature items can be considered ‘mainstream’ doesn’t mean we need to be mainstream in our approach to making or telling the story of them. We know it’s a pain in the ass to hand-bread every chicken finger to order, or bake bread in-house every day, but we’ve never shied away from things that are hard if they’re the right thing to do. We’re proud to tell the story of our food, our way.” — Peter Fowler, CEO, SIR Corp.
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