Jul 23rd, 2009| 
The last few weeks have been marred by one too many celebrity deaths. But what prompts me to write this blog is the recent passing away of Gidget – the Taco bell dog from the “Yo quiero Taco Bell” commercials. This dog knew how to appease the taco loving crowd and fueled a successful advertising campaign in the late 1990s.
At the age of 15 (about 75 in dog years), Gidget died from a stroke on July 22, 2009. As the little chihuahua trots off to dog heaven, we have to say good bye to one heck of a salesman. The dog appeared on a collection of Taco Bell’s commercials and helped them sell more tacos than any other K9 in history.
But such successful marketing campaigns around a simple theme aren’t new – others have tried it successfully including the classic What’s up from Budweiser and the Chimps from Career builder. But with the traditional mediums of print, TV and radio on the back shelf, what is Taco Bell doing to think outside the bun?
For starters, Taco Bell has taken a fresh approach to their mobile strategy. They have a mobile version of their website geared for the hungry-on-the-go crowd. According to Danielle Wolfson of Taco Bell, they even have Taco Bell mobile applications that users can download and install on their iPod or Blackberry.
But now the question is how to use social networks to gain a competitive edge? What can Taco Bell do that is fresh and new? Taco Bell’s fan page on Facebook is slightly shy off 500K fan, but its a pretty standard fan page. So other than the sharing e-coupons (that has been going around for years) what other tricks can you suggest?
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July 23rd, 2009 at 11:59
Sure gonna miss that dog! Those ads are a hoot! But whats a hoot is the cat Sockington. He has a million followers on Twitter. http://ca.lifestyle.yahoo.com/pets/cats/articles/e/behaviour-training/catarticles/58/twitter-s-latest-star-a-micro-blogging-cat/1
Think about that Taco Bell? You could have done that with your dog too!
July 23rd, 2009 at 14:44
I would have two comments, one hormonal and one neuronal (my usual approach):
Besides acting as Taco Bell’s icon, the poor dog (and I say “poor” because I’m an animal lover and of course secondary effects weren’t its fault), this canine also fueled fierce polemics about Mexicans’ image in USA, feeding a wrong perception and stereotyping of the already largest population minority, without avoiding its ridiculizing cliché (just listen the dog’s accent). Naturally, because the concept was targeted to the anglosaxon market (I wonder how many Mexicans really eat that stuff they wrongly name “tacos”)
On the other hand, what comes to social media marketing, there’s a wide possibilities spectrum:
That FB fan page may help to stress nutritional facts (if there’s any) on their menus, it’s the hot topic today for fast food. People believe more what others say, rather if it’s said by the advertiser.
That mobile application sure is a widget to locate restaurants via GPS and make your order on your way from your phone, that would be nice, even more, I would send by SMS or Twitter a special one-day-valid promotion/discount. Maybe their faux is to focus excesively on BlackBerries & iPhones, the perception would be that they are excluding any other S60 devices.
And anyway this will be perceived as a short term promotion campaign, so in order to keep it going they should refresh creativity pretty often.
July 23rd, 2009 at 14:56
Daniel, nice story about the cat. I am going to follow him… he seems fun!
Delfin, thanks for the response. Their latest trends show that about 80% of their mobile traffic is on blackberry or apple handhelds. So that makes sense for them to focus on that first. I like your idea about the promotional offer valid for a day. That could work very well…
July 24th, 2009 at 01:00
Thanks for posting about this, I would love to read more about this topic.
December 30th, 2009 at 10:10
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