Taco Bell Viral Marketing Campaign

Why Millennials Won't Buy Into Taco Bell's Viral Marketing

Taco Bell has released another ad in its ongoing viral marketing campaign. If you haven't been following the campaign, most likely because you think Taco Bell is disgusting, I'd say you have your priorities pretty well sorted out, but for the sake of the argument, here's a quick recap:

- On March 26th, Taco Bell released a commercial where a bunch of guys named "Ronald McDonald" talked about how much they love Taco Bell's new breakfast.

- McDonald's released a few rebuttals via Twitter and Instagram, including this cheeky little number on March 28th:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. pic.twitter.com/e0dFN1ZCqy — McDonald's (@McDonalds) March 29, 2014

and advertised that anyone buying a McDonald's breakfast through April 13th will receive a free coffee.

- Taco Bell came back with this Instagram video and is now re-mounting the attack with a new ad that features a man singing a song to the tune of "Old McDonald Had A Farm" about cutting his mullet, getting rid of all his old 80s nostalgia crap, getting with the times and embracing the new Taco Bell breakfast. Right, because we've all had that experience…

Meanwhile, while this social media crossfire ensued, Taco Bell launched an invasive attempt at directly engaging consumers, sending out "Taco Bell Breakfast Phones" to 1,000 "lucky" people. If you're racking your brains trying to think what a "Taco Bell Breakfast Phone" could possibly be used for, let me save you the trouble by telling you that it does the absolute most boring thing possible: it sends you ads. The phones are pre-paid burner phones that send texts out to recipients with "challenges" like "Tweet which taco bell breakfast item you are into" and "Brag about your phone. #breakfastphone."

Taco Bell really cracked the advertising code: just ask consumers to advertise for you! It's so simple! I find the concept of the Taco Bell Breakfast phone as nauseating as their breakfast likely is. I don't want to think about Taco Bell for one minute of my day, why would I want a separate cellphone that asks me to think about Taco Bell via text message multiple times a day? Receiving one in the mail would be on par with receiving someone's else's baby monitor, or a subpoena. However, it appears that some people were actually excited to receive a Taco Bell Breakfast Phone:

While your breakfast phone is being boring, my breakfast phone is chilling on the beach. #breakfastphone #LiveMas pic.twitter.com/vSjtyqzbGo — Jelly&Day (@JellyAndDay1) March 20, 2014

It's can't be ruled out, however, that these people might have been paid. That's my only explanation, anyways, because I don't want to live in a world where people are excited about receiving a self-updating advertisement. The Taco Bell Breakfast Phone aside, the back-and-forth between Taco Bell and McDonald's was pretty playful, good-spirited and creative, the commercials from Taco Bell not so much, but at least they got the ball rolling. I think what I find so unappealing about this campaign is that it's so directly aimed at millennials and if there's one thing you should know about millennials as an advertiser, it's that they don't like being marketed to. It's a generation of people who are so hyper-sensitive to and hypercritical of advertising that something like the Taco Bell Breakfast Phone feels like an affront. How dare you advertise to me so directly!?

Aside from that, no matter how viral or trendy their advertising is, the average millennial knows that Taco Bell is straight-up disgusting. I don't care how cute your Instagram video is, you're still trying to sell me a slab of mystery meat, wrapped in a slab of egg, wrapped in a waffle. I'm pretty sure I ate a churro from Taco Bell one time that was just a packing peanut with cinnamon on it. The product is not good and we all know it.

When it comes to marketing to millennials, it's hard to trick them into thinking something is good when it's not or that something has substance when it doesn't. An amazing infographic featuring research from Crowdtap emerged today that shows millennials trust User-Generated Content (UGC) 50% more than other media. Furthermore, the top three sources millennials trust when it comes to product info are "social networking," "peer reviews" and in the top spot, "conversations with friends." When it comes to the decision of whether or not to eat Taco Bell, who are you going to trust more? Taco Bell or your friend who just got sick from eating Taco Bell?

And on that note, here is an example of the type of brand engagement Taco Bell just can't buy although, in this particular case, they wouldn't want to: Around the same time Taco Bell was rolling out their campaign, comedian Neil Hamburger retweeted a list about 50+ tweets long of people saying that Taco Bell either made them sick or gave them food poisoning (he does this about once a month with Taco Bell and other fast food restaurants like KFC). Neil Hamburger doesn't have the same reach Taco Bell has, but he does have 82.5K followers and most of them are probably the type of informed consumer for whom an endless list of people getting sick from Taco Bell is enough for them to not want to eat Taco Bell again. Additionally, they'll probably tell their friends and word of mouth spreads, especially if those mouths are burping up tainted Taco Bell. Take note, advertisers:



- @ecoverton