Taco Bell Promotes New Appetizers With Digital & Social Media, Custom Apps

Taco Bell Introduces New Appetizers With Social CampaignLast week Taco Bell launched a new advertising campaign, focusing heavily on social media platforms to push new appetizer items.  The fast food chain is using a combination of social ads and custom apps on BuzzFeed, Machinima, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and new mobile navigation app Waze.

The highlights for this multi-platform social advertising include:

  • Facebook ads
  • Promoted Tweets
  • BuzzFeed: any viewer scrolling over a share button will see a two-second overlay pop up for Taco Bell’s new $.99 ‘Loaded Grillers’ appetizers, including a “Let Me Share This!” button.  Taco Bell will also promote the campaign with sponsored editorials on BuzzFeed.
  • Pandora: when users hit the thumbs up button, an ad for the Loaded Grillers will appear.
  • Machinima (game site): four branded videos will include pre-roll featuring the new appetizers.
  • Waze: Taco Bell is the first national advertiser for this new mobile navigation app; users will see a branded map pin for every Taco Bell location when searching directions.
  • YouTube, Yelp and PayPal: the campaign will also include banners across the Web, mobile and tablet properties for these sites.

The campaign is aimed at 18-34 year-old consumers, according Mark Chambers, media director for ad agency Digitas.  AdWeek reports that the campaign looks to be strongly tied to the final stages of football season.

It appears to be engaging fans already – the Facebook post above has already received nearly 50,000 likes and over 3,000 comments from Taco Bell’s 9.5 million fans on Facebook.

AdWeek credits Taco Bell for “cultivating a larger, pro-digital mindset,” and Chambers said it was easy to sell the brand on using multiple digital and social platforms.  Will it pay off?