Taco Bell's Integrated Marketing and Consumer Engagement

Taco Bell's integrated marketing and consumer engagement effort includes advertising (television, radio, outdoor, digital and cinema), as well as social and public relations support. From its beginning Taco bell has used very creative promotional activities. When the company lunch Doritos Locos Tacos, it took three years for the company for product development and 45 prototypes before it lunches the product. It has built up awareness prior to launch for its product.

Taco Bell has launched advertisements in print and electronic media via newspapers, billboards, television, theatres and magazines and also via social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In the year 2004 franchisee of Taco Bell gained naming rights and renamed Boise State Pavilion to Taco Bell Arena. In a tie-up with soft-drink Company Mountain Dew, Taco Bell stores earned exclusive rights to sell Baja Blast, a variant of Mountain Dew ( Taco Bell, 2018). In the year 2009 brand forayed in movie theatre advertising for the first time via music-video commercial. In the year 2009, it became a fast-food partner of NBA and according to the deal signed NBA allowed Taco Bell to advertise on ESPN, TNT, ABC and NBA-themed promotions ( Taco Bell, 2018). As part of its promotional campaign brand launched Dollar Cravings, a value-menu with eleven items priced at one dollar. Taco Bell has created plenty of pregame buzz around its Super Bowl spot without revealing very much at all. During Super Bowl XLVII, they introduced a commercial with a bunch of rowdies, elderly folk partying while they ate their taco supreme. Taco Bell also held a full-fledged runway show, with models strutting down a white catwalk in hot sauce bodysuits. The show was put on to promote Taco Bell’s new fashion collaboration with Forever 21 (Taco Bell, 2018). The social media component of the campaign includes Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, and he Instagram. The company creates various campaign in Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The company has adopted integrated marketing communications by using all forms of communication tools to provide a constituent message across all audience (Kerin & Hartley, 2017).

Recommendations:

Healthy Foods: High fat and high calorie food are not good for health-conscious people. Taco bell suffered a number of loss and lost its goodwill when in November 2006, twenty-two of its customers were hospitalized due to traces of E. coli bacteria (Adam, 2010). The new researches and the raised awareness among the publics about the harmful health impacts of fast food consumption is threat to Taco Bell’s fast foot menu. So, the company should make healthy, GMO free, Gluten free, low calories and fat free foods (Adam, 2010). Higher quality produce meat will need to be used in all products, not just premium items, incorporating organic or grass-fed items when possible. Although using high quality ingredients will increase Taco Bell’s costs, studies have found that customers are willing to pay higher prices for better ingredients (Adam, 2010).