The Making of ‘DealQuest’: Where Tech Innovation Meets Creativity

Bert Marissen is known as a relentlessly ambitious creative director with an unapologetically high creative bar and deep passion for building brands and new business. He thrives at the intersection of innovation, storytelling and strategy, constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

As group creative director and head of innovation at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, he helps brands craft immersive, future-forward experiences that go beyond traditional advertising. From product development to brand ecosystems, Bert focuses on shaping bold, culture-defining work that leaves a lasting impact.

Nat Wilkes is a creative technologist at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, where he explores the intersection of storytelling, interactivity, and emerging technology to build breakthrough brand experiences. With a background in digital production and creative innovation, Nat helps bridge creative vision and technical execution.

At Chiat, he works within the agency’s innovation arm, leading the development of AI-driven platforms and interactive tools that push the boundaries of how brands connect with fans.

Below, both Bert and Nat chatted with LBB about their recently-launched, completely AI-powered choose-your-own adventure game, as well as how they overcame hurdles along the way.

WHAT YOU MADE

‘DealQuest’ is more than just a game; it's an AI-powered, choose-your-own-adventure experience embedded in the Jack in the Box app. The latest in a string of sharp strategic plays to win not just transactional customers but true fans, the brand has collaborated with TBWA\Chiat\Day LA to redefine how it connects with audiences, blending storytelling, gaming, and brand engagement in ways that deeply resonate with the subcultures that intersect with its late-night sweet spot: gamers and horror fans.

Our creative teams built ‘DealQuest’ by harnessing OpenAI systems to create a deeply personalised and gamified consumer experience. It elevates the idea of value from simply offering a discount to creating an emotional moment of reward, where getting a deal feels earned, personal, and connected to the story, keeping customers authentically engaged with the brand. This intersection of brand storytelling, play, and real product rewards makes ‘DealQuest’ a landmark project in the QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) marketing landscape.

THE PROBLEM

In the QSR space, competitors have long relied on low price points that consume value messaging in a race to the bottom. Consumers know what to expect: interchangeable deals, limited menus, and fleeting brand connections. Our clients needed to find new, engaging methods of breaking through the status quo to capture the attention of those who have long held a mutual affinity for Jack: the late-night revellers.

Customers struggle to be loyal to QSR brands, as they are inundated with deals and app messaging daily from all leading brands following the same conventional playbook. For a critical promotional window like the Halloween season, brands need to solve how to drive and sustain continuous sales momentum as the season unfolds.

IDEATION

Starting from scratch, our strategy team methodologically mapped the full-cycle customer experience to mine for opportunities where value could be reimagined as something customers look forward to. As the complete picture came together, we found a lack of memorable, engaging touchpoints, but a major untapped opportunity to deliver a different kind of value.

To build a new kind of QSR app experience, we turned to the latest research on customer retention and loyalty.

Enter: gamification.

A large segment of Jack’s potential late-night fans and existing customers are gamers who have most recently found brand connection thanks to our partnership of Jack with T-Pain and ‘Fortnite’ on Twitch streaming. Leveraging the insight that guests are 184% more likely to proceed to checkout from gamified experiences, we began the work of further utilising gamification as a hook that keeps customers in the purchase funnel.

Instead of static offers, we envisioned driving potential customers directly to the Jack app via a narrative-driven, interactive app game that players would find compelling and memorable. We wanted users to feel immersed and were quickly inspired by our own nostalgic gaming experiences.

In evaluating concepts for their potential to engage users while also considering their valuable time, we realised that this was the moment to pioneer a QSR investment in the capabilities of AI. Our goal was to create an experience that didn’t just capitalise on AI's novelty, but genuinely utilised its capabilities to enhance user engagement.

PROTOTYPE AND DESIGN

The concept of an adventure game, powered by AI, quickly took centre stage. Unlocking personalisation on a scale never before possible, we envisioned a game that would allow players to choreograph battles, explore endless storylines, and unlock deals in a personalised manner. We wanted every interaction to feel unique, ensuring that no two playthroughs for a visitor were the same. This was not an AI ‘efficiency’ mission, but an endeavour to make a top-tier app game with millions of customised ways to play and win. Our North Star: create an experience that generates value for customers in a completely disruptive way.

When working on experiences, we always start with a prototype of the core functionality so our clients can experience the idea versus reading about it in a deck. Complex mechanics don’t translate well on paper, so the sooner we can get out of a deck, the better. Designing and prototyping ‘DealQuest’ was an incredible collaborative effort for both our agency’s innovation discipline, NEXT, and Jack’s development arm, DGX. From the start of design iterations, we knew that in pulling this off, we were setting the stage for unlimited future gaming opportunities.

One of the most intricate challenges was ensuring our AI system could power not just on-screen text, but the entire interactive experience. To achieve this, we built a network of AI agents that worked together in concert to manage each user’s gameplay. One agent wrote the evolving story, while another read the story and guided the writer on where to go next, keeping the narrative logic consistent and the pacing natural. A third agent interpreted story events to update the background graphics in real time, while another controlled on-screen character behaviour and reactions.

Together, these agents created a living, responsive world, where every choice a player made shaped what happened next. We ultimately settled on nine story beats within our five-page seed prompt, where our copywriters and art directors collaborated with AI to craft the game’s riddles and storylines, blending their creative instincts with technology to bring our vision to life.

We utilised tools and crafted prompts in OmniAI, Omnicom’s internal GPT platform, which integrated with OpenAI's LLM to generate dynamic narrative elements and ensure a seamless user experience. Balancing the creative risks with technical feasibility required constant testing and iteration, ensuring each story beat and interactive element worked flawlessly within our carefully crafted guardrails for a protected brand experience.

LIVE

‘DealQuest’ went live on October 1st, and was playable through Halloween. This game is a clear industry advancement, moving beyond the use of AI as a novelty and instead positioning it as an accessible tool that opens new avenues for consumer engagement.

Creative director Dylan Cimo says, “AI is an incredible creative tool in the right hands. Its use cases for brands have quickly come a long way, but we’re just scratching the surface of how brands can use it to create experiences that feel personal and specific to individual customers and fans. That feeling that no one else is experiencing this game the same way you are is as rewarding as the deals you win playing it.”

As we look to the future, ‘DealQuest’ has opened doors to endless possibilities for integrating AI technology into customer engagement strategies. We have transformed Jack’s app into a platform where story, fandom, and sales will continue to collide, creating a new generation of loyal customers. ‘DealQuest’ has not only met Jack in the Box’s initial challenge, but also set a new standard for interactive marketing within the QSR space.