Last year, the brand challenged two restaurants’ ownership claims to the phrase ‘Taco Tuesday,’ ultimately succeeding in its goal to bring the saying into the public domain.
Taco Bell made its petition to cancel a trademark the centerpiece of its campaign. / Taco Bell
Until last year, the phrase ‘Taco Tuesday’ was technically trademarked, and any restaurant that used it without permission faced the possibility of legal repercussions (though no doubt many of us can name a taqueria or two in our neighborhoods that have been routinely violating that law). Today, thanks to a legal dispute–turned–marketing campaign initiated by Taco Bell and ad agency Deutsch, the phrase is free to use for all restaurants across the US.
The campaign, ’Freeing Taco Tuesday,’ is one of the honorees at this year’s Brave Brands awards, held by the Advertising Club of New York in partnership with the International Andy Awards.
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It began in May of last year with a petition filed by Taco Bell with the appeal board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The brand made the case that ‘Taco Tuesday,’ which had been trademarked across 49 states by a restaurant chain called Taco John’s since 1989, deserved to be liberated into the public domain.
“Under the previous trademark registration, all restaurants and taco vendors operated in fear of cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits while promoting their business and their love of tacos,” Taco Bell chief marketing officer Taylor Montgomery tells The Drum. “That didn’t sit right with us, and we knew we had to act on behalf of taco lovers nationwide.”
And while there don’t appear to have been many legal disputes over the use of the ‘Taco Tuesday’ buzzword, it isn’t completely unheard of. In 2019, for example, Taco John’s sent a cease-and-desist letter to a Wyoming brewery that had been using the phrase to promote a food truck that it operated on Tuesdays.
From the beginning, Taco Bell framed the campaign in the language of social justice: it positioned itself as an intrepid purveyor of justice, intent on wresting valuable intellectual property from the greedy hands of a privileged few and distributing it among the deserving masses. On its website, Taco Bell hailed its final victory in New Jersey as the drawing of “a new era for restaurants nationwide.”
The core challenge of the campaign was to transform what normally probably would’ve been a boring legal document – the original petition for canceling the trademark – into a marketing campaign that would ignite excitement and engagement from the brand’s audience. To that end, it enlisted the help of popular lawyers on TikTok to explain (and promote) the cause to its followers. It also started a petition on change.org, which ended up receiving more than 25,000 signatures.
“How can someone own ‘Taco Tuesday’? It’s a common phrase,” the brand wrote in the mission statement of its change.org petition. “Can you imagine if we weren’t allowed to say ‘what’s up’ or ‘brunch’?”
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Another core element of the campaign was a commercial starring LeBron James, titled “Taco Bleep,” in which the NBA superstar was censored from saying the full phrase and railed against the absurdity of its trademarked status.
While Taco Bell easily could have simply made ads bashing the ’Taco Tuesday’ trademarks, it was the fact that the brand took legal action that won over consumers’ attention, according to Deutsch co-chief creative officer Matt Ian. “I certainly learned a bunch about … the power of a good corporate legal scrap to capture the public’s attention,” he says. “At the risk of sounding corny, it’s not, ‘Say mas,’ it’s ‘Live Mas.’”
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Ultimately, the effort worked. In August of last year, Taco Bell announced that Taco John’s trademark had been relinquished. To celebrate the “liberation,” the brand invested a $5m ‘Taco Tab‘ to participating taco vendors nationwide, giving customers a special discount through DoorDash.
Then, last October, Gregory’s Restaurant & Bar in New Jersey, an eatery with a state-specific ‘Taco Tuesday‘ trademark claim – dropped its claim, too. The development completed Taco Bell’s goal of enabling restaurants across the US to use the phrase “without fear of consequences.”
Though Taco Bell’s legal team originally advised that the full process could take as long as two years, only about six months had elapsed between the filing of the original petition in court and the relinquishing of the second and final trademark. During that time, the campaign earned the brand more than 21bn impressions in earned media.
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