Cannes Lions

TACO BELL BLACKOUT

DIGITASLBi, San Francisco / TACO BELL / 2015

Awards:

1 Silver Cannes Lions
1 Bronze Cannes Lions
1 Shortlisted Cannes Lions
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Overview

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Credits

OVERVIEW

Description

Our objective was to drive downloads of Taco Bell’s new mobile ordering app by generating mass awareness and social conversation amongst Taco Bell’s most engaged fans across the social web. How could we get them to notice our news and motivate them to tell the rest of the world? The answer: a simple deprivation strategy, take away what they love most—Taco Bell’s witty social presence—to create mystery and intrigue around launch. The idea was to blackout Taco Bell’s social media accounts for 72 hours and reveal that the only way to Taco Bell was in its mobile app.

Execution

On October 28, 2014 at 12am, Taco Bell's Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Vine, G+, Tumblr and tacobell.com disappeared. Disappearing was not as simple as switching everything off. It had to appear natural to each environment and required us to work closely with each platform’s product teams. We relied on organic traffic along with paid social media across Facebook and Twitter to promote the solid black squares that replaced all content with the following message appearing on our channels: "The New Way to Taco Bell isn't on (social channels), it's #OnlyInTheApp" with a link to download.

Outcome

The results blew away campaign forecasts and benchmarks:

- Over 300K people downloaded the Taco Bell app in 2 days; 2.6 million by the campaign’s end

- The app ranked #1 in App Store Food + Drink category, beating out Starbucks

- 2B earned media impressions achieved in 3 days

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