Download Comparative Social Marketing

5/5/2014
Comparative
Social Marketing
of Taco Bell and McDonalds
Tierney Torchin
COM 100
 “On my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed
any unauthorized assistance on this work”
Tierney Torchin
Abstract
Fast food is a world in which the product is never expected to be up to a high quality. Because of
this, the companies cannot rely solely on the food to sell itself, but instead, must employ smart
marketing tactics to attract customers. Taco Bell and McDonalds are to companies which excel at having
a following, as well as with adapting to the times. They have both needed to rebrand within recent years
in order to mesh with the new culture of cool. They are both active users of Twitter in order to promote
the life that comes along with the food they sell. What is interesting is that while McDonalds has a much
larger following overall, Taco Bell is the company that has become an icon amongst the younger
generation, prompting their fans to take marketing into their own hands. By allowing opportunities to
engage with the brand, Taco Bell has transformed their brand to be a more effective type of marketing
where the company only needs to put out a portion of the media, with the fans supplementing the rest.
McDonalds has attempted to interact in the same way, but due to branding errors, has fallen flat. Both
McDonalds and Taco Bell have employed tactics of switching to the most current forms of media,
rebranding themselves, and strategically marketing to become “cool” places to eat in the eyes of their
younger audiences.
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When Taco Bell decided to introduce their new line of breakfast items, they chose to use
consumer-intensive marketing campaigns in order to get people excited about the food. The waffle taco
was the main item marketed. Taco Bell put out a campaign where people with large internet followings
competed to win clothing with waffle tacos printed all over them by posting on their personal Twitter or
Instagram within a certain amount of time. The campaign was an overwhelming success – the jackets
and pajamas were so adorable that the competition got tough, and each person individually generated
publicity for Taco Bell as a whole. This campaign shed a new light on the waffle taco, which went from
being seen as disgusting to almost adorable. Rather than being a food item, it became a clothing
accessory donned by many famous internet personalities.
When the waffle taco was released to the public, it initially saw a gigantic boom in sales. Taco
Bell breakfast looked for the first week or so like it might actually be a contender against the big guns
like McDonalds breakfast, where breakfast makes up 20% of its sales (Berman 2014). The initial boom
was greater than Taco Bell had initially expected, leading them to increase the menu size immediately to
keep up the momentum. However, soon after, the breakfast boom settled down, and only a few weeks
after its launch, the true results are looking clearer: while the marketing was phenomenal, the product
just is not up to the same standard as McDonalds breakfast. Customers are starting to move back to the
other restaurants; while it looks like it will be a success, the success is nearly a failure in comparison to
other launches Taco Bell has had such as the Doritos Locos tacos.
The type of marketing used here is a direct example of the current shift from marketing a
product to marketing a style. Rather than putting their effort and money into making a delicious
breakfast menu that would attract by itself, the idea was to market their brand as the cool thing to buy
by involving taste-makers and people who can spread their message through grassroots communication.
This is the side of marketing Taco Bell most frequently employs. On the other side of the same spectrum
lies McDonalds. This company has also been making the transition to being cool, but because of their
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more widespread demographic, has not found as much success. Because of this, McDonalds used its
online presence to promote the thing it still does have over the competition – their food. However, this
is the reason that even with inferior breakfast products, Taco Bell’s fan following has been growing at a
much faster rate than McDonalds; while they still have less followers on Twitter, they have a
significantly larger amount of involvement from the followers they do have (RSM Index 2013).
Fast food is a world where there are not that high of expectations. People do not go into these
restaurants expecting a gourmet meal to be laid out on the red tray, nor do they expect outstanding
customer service for the most part. This is what makes their marketing and media so vital. Rather than
selling greasy food that has a fifty/fifty chance of making the customer sick, new media has opened up
the door to advertising a lifestyle rather than a burger. Twitter, being one of the most popular social
networking sites, is the perfect outlet to sell this lifestyle. Both restaurants are active Twitter users, as
they must be in order to keep up with the younger demographic that comes along with the territory of
serving cheap food. Originally, both had marketing strategies that had held true for some time without
needing to instigate change. Taco Bell had been going with the campaign to “Think Outside the Bun,”
while McDonalds had been sticking with the traditional jingle, followed by the words “I’m loving it.” The
changing era of marketing has led Taco Bell to change to “Think Mas” (Taco Bell) and McDonalds to nix
the jingle and focus on their McCafe and fresher produce products.
The demographic of consumers has been changing. “According to an August 2010 meeting of
the Advertising Research Foundation, “kids’ purchasing influence” was $700 billion in 2009, up from $50
billion in 2000” (Montgomery 2011), which means the younger group is now capable of influencing the
marketing choices made by companies that rely on them for business. The power now lies in the hands
of younger people, ranging from the ages of 17-35. This younger group is more focused on what is
trendy than what is actually good. This switch is easy to see in clothing such as TOMS, which tend to be
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expensive because of the impact of the brand rather than quality. The mindset has migrated across to
food, making it a competition to be cooler and more in the now than other brands.
The first step that had to be taken in order to give off an appearance of cool was to understand
what being cool means. “Cool operates within a cultural framework, what is cool in terms of identity
projects and consumption is culturally defined and constantly changing” (Ferguson 2011), which means
that in order to keep up with the curve, it is vital to be in tune with what is culturally significant at that
moment. Being cool requires timeliness because of its liquid, flowing nature. In order to do this,
companies must find those people who are setting what is and what is not cool. These people, known as
taste makers or trend-setters, tend to participate in clothing, style, and music a year or so before they
become known to others as cool. Taco Bell has excelled at this tactic, putting references to popular
celebrities on their Twitter with a spin to make it applicable to the company. One successful example
was a tweet reading “Thank you based Taco Bell” (Taco Bell Twitter) which ended up receiving over
seventeen thousand retweets. Timeliness can also be extremely unsuccessful, like it was in the case of
McDonalds making a specific post for Bring your Child to Work Day. The post generated a mere 130
retweets, even though it was done on the proper day, with a cute photo attached (McDonalds Twitter).
McDonalds in this example posted about an insignificant day that has little to no impact on their
audience, rather than focusing on an important day or a cultural reference. By lacking a sense of humor
and by not being in touch with what is important to their audience, McDonalds is failing at relating.
The ultimate goal is to get the brand of the company to become part of their identity, so that
they will eventually decide that “this is the beginning of a mutually beneficial, long term relationship”
(Cohen 2014) in which they are willing to represent the brand in all aspects of their life. The way to do
this is to incorporate the fans, as “it is people rather than commodities who create cool” (Nancarrow
2006). To get a long-term relationship formed with the larger audiences, it is important to give them a
face that is relatable and interesting. This is most often done through personification. Personification
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comes in many forms – the most obvious is through a mascot. Ronald McDonald and the Taco Bell
Chihuahua were the initial forms of personification used by either company, but culture has evolved so
that people are more relatable than mascots. A new form of personification has come about, where
“the brand is personified or represented as a person by consumers themselves” (Cohen 2014). The
waffle taco example mentioned previously is an example of this, where the power gets placed into the
hands of the consumer rather than the company attempting to force the product on them. Because
Taco Bell has been marketing based on how much fun they are as a brand, it was particularly successful
to make marketing into a game. People were eager to be involved, even if it meant giving up free time in
order to compete in the challenges that Taco Bell bequeathed upon them.
McDonalds on the other hand attempted to run a grassroots campaign for Twitter marketing by
circulating the hashtag “McDStories”, encouraging followers to use the hashtag and share their
wonderful experiences at the grimy fast food joint. Shockingly, it did not go as planned, with people
posting stories such as “#McDStories I just read that McDonalds chicken nuggets have a foaming agent
in them, similar to products used for building materials” (Storm 2014). McDonalds had been in a
campaign advertising the freshness of their products at the time, so was expecting people to share good
memories and experiences within the hashtag, forgetting for some odd reason that the vast majority of
their menu consists of food that could put a person on their deathbed. The campaign immediately went
viral, with the tweets popping up on news sites because of how hilarious it was. McDonalds tried to
rescind their initial tweets in order to nullify the issue, but deleting their tweets did little to stop the
spreading of the story. While it did little overall to harm the company, it did hurt the brand by reminding
those who had forgotten just how morbid this product marketing itself as healthy is.
Retweeting material generated from fans or anyone who the brand feels they wish to have
associated is another way to form a personal connection with the audience. McDonalds and Taco Bell
both accomplish this with grace. McDonalds has chosen to take a soft approach to the matter by only
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retweeting material that consumers choose to do on a whim, such as internet famous fans taking
pictures with their free coffee on Free Coffee Day. They also retweet frequently from inside the
organization. There are individual twitter accounts for every branch of McDonalds which all generate
different material. The Me Encanta twitter targets the Hispanic community, McCafe has its own line, and
every region is able to run their own twitter as well. This allows for a lot of material to be generated and
for the main Twitter to look more diverse even though it is still McDonalds Corporation constructing the
content. By having multiple users active on the Twitter, it looks more personal than it actually is.
Taco Bell has not had negative experiences lately with fans, so is very willing to encourage
content generation in order to have material. They have recruited famous personalities to represent the
brand, saying that they are paid only in Taco Bell merchandise and publicity as if that is worth doing the
work. This opens up the opportunity for Taco Bell to have advertising not only throughout their entire
social sphere, but throughout the famous personalities’ as well. Taco Bell has subsidiary twitters such as
Feed the Beat and Taco Bell for Teens, but only features a minimal amount of content created by them.
The company also frequently gives away merchandise to people who they wish to represent the brand
on the basis that the people will then tweet a picture in it. This tactic penetrates even more social
spheres and allows growth of the brand in a seemingly grassroots fashion. Even though Taco Bell is
encouraging the spread of the brand, the content is almost solely generated by other people by their
own choice and action.
The capital of cool is hard to keep a hold on because “trying too hard is anathema to cool”
(Nancarrow 2006). This, for obvious reasons, is extremely inconvenient. However, once again Taco Bell
has figured out how to harness the mystical force of cool, while McDonalds has fallen flat. Not trying
sounds impossible in marketing, but it is not; the key is to try extremely hard, but make it look like the
company doesn’t care. A type of exclusivity and passivity is necessary in looking cool. At very similar
times, both companies ran music festivals. Both allowed unknown people to attend, but Taco Bell’s still
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went over better. This is because while McDonalds had pictures showing pretty people smiling and
posing for the camera, Taco Bell showed it like a gigantic party that was too exclusive for the average
person to be there. McDonalds looked too approachable, too every day to be something to strive for.
This type of engagement encourages the people to “interact with, befriend, and integrate brands into
their personal identities and social worlds” (Montgomery 2011). Looking just out of reach is a way to
successfully try hard while allowing the consumer to feel like the brand is still cool. The lifestyle achieved
by eating a Taco Bell taco is ultimately desirable because it involves music festivals where all the pictures
show is sparklers and swirling hair, just like the cool kids used to post.
The type of cool chosen to represent a brand is a vital choice, as it can impact how well the
campaigns will hold up in the face of controversy. McDonalds’ choice to promote freshness through a
local growers’ campaign was very unwise due to the questionable freshness of their meat. When a
picture surfaced of a mysterious pink substance that supposedly was unprocessed McDonalds meat, the
campaign of freshness was flipped on its head. Rather than the general public deciding that the pink
slime couldn’t be real, they spoke out against McDonalds and chastised the company for attempting to
promote freshness at all. Trying to market the brand as healthy when it so obviously was not ended up
turning into a public relations disaster. Taco Bell had a similar scandal involving a claim that the
company should not be legally allowed to advertise their product as meat. While Taco Bell did fight
against the claim, the story barely circulated because the company is expected to be disgusting. Taco
Bell has never laid a claim of being healthy, the meat being quality, or the meat even being real meat.
Rather than feeling deceived as in the McDonalds case, Taco Bell fans did not care. The image of
partying is not expected to match up with healthy food, so their media campaign continued running
strong even in the face of controversy.
A large reason for the success of Taco Bell is that they properly employ both symmetrical and
asymmetrical modes of communication. Because coolness is forever changing, trying to enforce the type
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that has become comfortable is not only impractical, but is completely ineffective. Cool must be seen as
“a form of cultural capital that increasingly consists of insider knowledge about commodities and
consumption practices as yet unavailable to the mainstream” (Nancarrow 2006). In order to properly
harness coolness, those insiders with specialized knowledge must be interviewed, studied, and
observed. By doing this, it becomes evident that referencing Mean Girls in a tweet would generate
activity, while referencing Shakespeare would not. The initial downside of two-way symmetrical
communication is that “the organization and a public each other must be willing to accommodate the
interests of the other” (Grunig 2001). If the public is unwilling to participate in the activities that the
company encourages them to, then the entire idea fails. However, if persistent enough, one idea will
catch on, which leads to a snowballing effect. Once a brand has been labeled cool such as Apple, there is
little that they can do to go back on that.
Taco Bell employs a more symmetrical model, while McDonalds begins to, but ends up mostly
asymmetrical in the end anyway. Taco Bell forms their campaigns by figuring out what will be appealing
to their audience with the help of trend-setters. The campaigns they run are then often interactive,
allowing another step of engagement with the consumer. Most of these campaigns also allow for the
fans to generate their own media, which Taco Bell can then use to advertise themselves through this
other person’s social media. McDonalds attempts to stay in touch, but fail to realize that there could be
more to the product than the product itself. When they do make an effort to get the community
engaged, they have been taking the wrong route; by promoting health aspects of the company, it looks
like a very sad attempt at brainwashing the consumer. Because of their failures, McDonalds as of late
has retreated back into a comfortable asymmetrical model where they generate moderate amounts of
activity because people are simply fans of the food. Most recent tweets are pictures of food,
encouraging retweets. Because they have such a large fan following, until they are capable of
conducting the proper research, it may be a good idea for them to remain only moderately cool. Two
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hundred retweets on a picture of a Big Mac is not much, but it is better than the publicity McDonalds
would get if they had another #McDStories incident.
While both Taco Bell and McDonalds excel overall in having a strong web presence, the
construction of a “cool” company has allowed Taco Bell to generate a fan base which is not only
increasing rapidly, but is thoroughly invested in the media put out by the business. McDonalds has the
most followers of any fast food company on Twitter, but due to their failure to construct a likable
persona on the social networking site, have little activity from their fans. Understanding what creates a
cool company is vital to having interaction with the audience. If a symmetrical stance is desired, there
must be a willingness from both sides to understand, participate with, and listen to one another.
McDonalds fell short on understanding its audience, while Taco Bell succeeded in branding themselves
through Twitter as fun, hip, and overall cool. Fast food is a world in which normally, the expectation
level is pretty low; but by reaching above it, a brand is able to become something greater than itself.
Rather than being a poor life choice, proper use of coolness and social media can turn the business into
a life style.
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Sources
Berman, Jillian. 2014. “Taco Bell President May Not Know What 4/20 Is, But He Knows What The Kids
Like.” Huffington Post. Last modified March 27, 2014.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/27/taco-bell-president-420_n_5044973.html.
Cohen, Ronald Jay. 2014. "Brand Personification: Introduction and Overview." Psychology and Marketing
31: 1-30. doi: 10.1002/mar.20671.
Ferguson, Shelagh. 2011. “A global culture of cool? Generation Y and their perception of coolness.”
Young Consumers 12.3: 265-275.
Grunig, James. 2001. “Two-Way Symmetrical Public Relations: Past, Present, and Future.” Handbook of
Public Relations: 11-30.
Montgomery, Kathryn, and Jeff Chester. 2011. "Digital Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents:
Problematic Practices and Policy Interventions." Public Health Law & Policy.
Nancarrow, Clive, Pamela Nancarrow, and Julie Page. 2001. “An analysis of the concept of cool
and its marketing implications.” Journal of Consumer Behavior 1.4.
Restaurant Social Media Index. 2013. “Top Social Engagement.” http://rsmindex.com/2013-socialengagement-q3/.
Storm, Kate. 2014. “#McDStories I just read that McDonalds chicken nuggets have a foaming agent in
them, similar to products used for building materials.” Twitter.
Twitter. 2014. McDonald’s. https://twitter.com/McDonalds.
Twitter. 2014. Taco Bell. https://twitter.com/TacoBell.
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