Meaty Cheesy Boys

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The Meaty Cheesy Boys was a fictional boy band created to market Jack in the Box's Ultimate Cheeseburger. A direct parody of the popular boy bands of the late 1990s, The Meaty Cheesy Boys were instantly popular as hipster icons, and recordings of their commercials were traded around the Internet.

1 Composition
2 Campaign
3 Internet buzz
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] Composition

The band was comprised of five members, each obviously selected to meet a different archetype in the boy band formula. In addition, their names were each just two initials, leading to confusion.

EJ - "The Shy One"
TJ - "The Exotic One"
JT - "The Cute One"
TK - "The Tough One"
The Other EJ - "The Other One"

Though their profiles on the website and in the advertisements list them as having different favorite colors, goals and activities, they all list "The Ultimate Cheeseburger" as their favorite food. Their manager and owner was Jack, the traditional talking head mascot for Jack in the Box.

[edit] Campaign

Apollo Interactive was the advertising agency that conceived of this concept. In addition to the regular TV spots, they created a network of websites to promote the band's image, including a site for "The Carnivores", a professional football team also owned by Jack.

[edit] Internet buzz

The campaign used several internet tools in innovative ways, and many of these techniques are still used to promote fake bands and create a fake sense of buzz for fictional products in new movies and tv shows. The website featured fake testimonials from fans gushing about both the band and the cheeseburgers they endorsed. There was also a place to send e-mails to the bandmembers, after which you would receive a series of obviously fake e-mails generated by form, ostensibly from the bandmember of your choice. This campaign was similar to the one used to promote Calvin Klein's cKone fragrance.

[edit] Trivia

In 1997, Jack in the Box had a commercial in which an ad executive proposes creating a new musical group called "The Spicy Crispy Chicks" (a parody of the Spice Girls) to promote their Spicy Crispy Chicken sandwich. Jack disapproves of his blatant use of sex to market the burger, and fires him on the spot. The commercial, created by media agency Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Co. won a Silver Lion award at the International Advertising Festival that year, and was so popular with viewers that the ad exec in the commercial made a return appearance in Jack's Ultimate Cheeseburger campaign. This time, he proposes using the Meaty Cheesy Boys to market the sandwich, telling Jack that "girls love this stuff" as he dances to an MCB music video. When Jack, obviously displeased, shoots back that their target audience was men, the oblivious ad exec asks, "What's a target?" as he continues dancing.