Taco Bell launched in Australia in 2019, its second attempt entering the market and was floundering. With same store sales in decline and with only 30 stores, it needed to turn things around. Luckily, the Taco Bell brand is one of the coolest QSR brands out there. With 'cultural cool' in their DNA, we just needed to remind the team that their mantra of "sales overnight, brand over time" didn't need to mean boring. It was time to ring the bell.
After winning the Taco Bell business in January of 2021, it was time to get to work. It didn't take us long to find the issue. For a brand known for its 'cultural cool' and cult following in the USA, the brand in Australia had no personality. It was playing it safe in every aspect of its marketing. For a brand with small budgets, playing it safe is the highest risk strategy you could take. With a tag line of Live Mas (live large), the marketing was living small. It was time to turn up the dial from boring retail to breakthrough retail.
Our first task was to create some quick wins in the retail calendar while we were developing a longer term brand strategy. At minimum, we need to demonstrate that hardcore retail could be executed in the Taco Bell personality: rebellious, witty and cool. And for a brand with only 30 stores and limited marketing, on a shoestring budget. All while bringing the franchisees along for the ride.
The first cab off the rank was the Crunchwrap Supreme. Their most iconic and innovative product. So with no money and a lightning quick turnaround time, we'd spoof another innovative product, the iPhone. It was time to start playing into culture and get people to notice the brand beyond a food shot and a price point. We launched with OOH and a series of social films.
Next up was the Naked Chicken Taco. A unique product where the taco shell was made out of chicken. If we couldn't make a splash with this product, we were never going to make it happen. Once again, we demonstrated that with little time and even less money, creativity could still reign supreme. And how could we feature this masterpiece making $5 look like $5 million? We'll use the greatest masterpieces of all time, of course. After all, they were out of license.
Inspired by @Classical_Art_Memes, we also created a series of social posts and radio to support the program. To say that the feedback we got from the public was positive would be an understatement.
While some fun quick and creative fixes, both of these campaigns were one-offs while we developed the longer term strategy. What we needed was three fold: a campaign thought that could hold multiple retail programs, something that got people to reevaluate what they thought about Taco Bell and creative consistency to start to build some memory structures with consumers.
We'd have four guiding principles:
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No Taco Bell No Story - this is retail, not brand work.
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Culturally Relevant - are we making something that appeals to Gen Z, our target?
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Aussie at its Heart - feel like we're part of Australia, not just visiting.
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Make people think, not just buy.
The truth of the matter was that we also needed to come up with something that was highly repeatable. A template that allowed us to move at the speed of retail. A creative concept and template that would help people put Taco Bell into their consideration set. We needed to make the brand worth trialing. Worth eating. Worth anything really. From cashing in your crappy crypto to fighting a cyclops for. And, once again, in looking to make our small production budgets look bigger than they are, we took another page from meme culture and decided to revise B Movies to be all about how you'd do anything from some Taco Bell.
Each campaign would be rolled out across digital and social film, OOH and radio. Continually playing off our creative construct of "worth _____ for". For the first time in over two years, Taco Bell has seen an increase in same store transactions for over six straight weeks and counting.
When you have a great brand, it goes to show that you can punch above your weight at any budget.