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Taco Bell Campaign Features Direct Response

04 Aug 2010
Posted by Market and Main Media

Taco Bell broke into the direct response arena with an integrated campaign that featured both a long-form infomercial as well as two short-form (one 15-second, one 30-second) infomercials. In fact, Taco Bell is the first fast-food restaurant to use this media form.

The occasion was the franchise’s launch into the “better-for-you” fast-food space. After surveying consumers, Taco Bell found 69% (more than two-thirds) of consumers were specifically interested in healthier drive-thru menu options. These findings, along with the fact that 70% of the restaurant’s business is drive-thru, prompted Taco Bell to launch it’s “Drive-Thru Diet” (based on their Fresco menu, each of the 7 items have less than 9 grams of fat).

Given Taco Bell’s status as a fast-food purveyor, the marketing team (headed by Tom Wagner, Taco Bell Corp.’s VP of Consumer Insights/Makreting) needed to raise awareness of their newest offerings and inspire trial. Once people tasted the new items, Wagner was confident “they would return.”

In pursuit of a campaign that “was not what you’d normally see,” Wagner and team rolled out a long form commercial featuring a loyal Taco Bell consumer who had lost 54 pounds while eating from the drive-thru menu. It also featured the NBA’s dietitian, Ruth Carey, with healthy eating tips. Call-to-action was to try an item from the Fresco menu and incentive came in the form of coupons for a free Fresco taco, downloadable from DriveThruDiet.com. The campaign also includes TV commercials, interactive online marketing efforts “including Twitter contests, the Frescolution (an online pledge to start living a healthier lifestyle) and an opportunity for consumers to send a Fresco e-card,” explained Wagner. Taco Bell also ran two short-form infomercials, 15- and 30-second spots. Though the infomercial only ran a few times on national television, the online efforts are still running strong.

“It launched with TV and stays alive virally,” Wagner told Response Magazine. “Since the launch of the commercials, it’s driven the single largest increase of traffic to Tacobell.com of anything we’ve put on the web.”

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