On October 28, 2014, at 12am, Taco Bell's Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Vine, G+, Tumblr, Snapchat, and tacobell.com disappeared. All content was replaced by solid black squares. Finally, after nine long hours of fans and the press clamoring for an explanation, we told everyone why.

The message: "The New Way to Taco Bell isn't on (Platform), it's #OnlyInTheApp" appeared across all of our properties along with a link to download. It wasn’t as simple as shutting it down. We worked closely with each platform in order to secure data, make the blackout feel natural and drive people to the app.

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

Our objective was to drive downloads of Taco Bell’s new mobile ordering app by shutting down everywhere else our fans could engage with our brand. Our audience is hyper-engaged online and in social media, so by taking those platforms away and pointing them to the one place we were available, we created mystery and intrigue around the launch.

This simple strategy played off the insight that the fastest way to get our audience’s attention was to disappear. Even igniting some fear that we were hacked, or worse—had left social for good. The execution was equally simple: black out all of Taco Bell’s social media accounts for 72 hours—building curiosity and speculation—and reveal that the only way to Taco Bell was in the new app.