Taco Bell’s innovative campaign won gold in Creative Innovation at The Drum Awards for Marketing. It aimed to boost lunch transactions by establishing Taco Bell as a value lunch option, resulting in a doubling of revenue and a significant increase in brand perception and customer satisfaction.
Tell someone you went to a Taco Bell, and they’ll probably say, “Oh nice, I didn’t know they were in the UK.” That’s the thing — people know Taco Bell, but they don’t really know it. Awareness is high, consideration low (market share even lower). Most stores are out of the way. In London, you’re usually one kilometre from a McDonald’s, but six from a Taco Bell. Worse still, no one knows if it’s for lunch, a snack, dinner, or sharing with a stranger at 1am outside a club. The problem is, most Brits just don’t have a reason to go. As you can imagine, this has a real business impact. Despite a steady growth of stores, Taco Bell’s store-on-store transactions had fallen. That’s millions in lost revenue.
The goal was simple: give people a reason to go to Taco Bell and drive transactions. In QSR, the best way to do that is by focusing on a consumption occasion. In the US, Taco Bell dominates late-night. But in the UK, lunch was the key occasion to drive volume. Yet only 20% of Taco Bell’s sales came at lunch — half of dinner — with 11am–3pm slots ranking just 4th and 5th in sales. When Brits think lunch, they don’t think Taco Bell.
Especially during a cost of living crisis, people want to spend as little as possible and still stay full. Value is the #1 driver of weekday lunch choice — and Taco Bell wasn’t known for it. To change that, it had to become a value lunch option.
Increase lunchtime revenue above market growth of 5.3%
By boosting transactions at lunchtime
By showing Taco Bell is a good value lunch option, increasing value perception on YouGov from -2.8 back to positive
First, Taco Bell needed a genuinely good value lunch option. As summer ended and Brits returned to work and school, lunch deals flooded the market. But were they all good value? YouGov defines value as brands offering a lot for the price — a simple equation: Value = Satisfaction / Price. We needed to win on value without slashing prices.
Matching our QSR rivals wouldn’t cut it. Taco Bell had just 0.8% share of voice — and with McDonald’s dropping prices with deals like 3 for £3, going head-to-head was a losing game. We needed to steal volume elsewhere.
Enter the supermarket meal deal: bought weekly by over a third of Brits, yet only 18% were satisfied. If we could offer a similarly priced lunch with more satisfaction, we could steal their lunch money.
The answer: a £3.99 deal (50p off with the app) for a cravings burrito, fries, and a drink. More satisfying than a limp sandwich, sad crisps, and a fizzy drink.
How could we convince Brits that our meal deal was more satisfying than a supermarket one? Simple — just tell them the facts. Our research showed Brits are creatures of habit, with 1 in 2 workers admitting it when it comes to lunch. But they’re ashamed creatures of habit. 46% felt lunch choice regret, and 44% were craving something tastier. Yet nearly a third ate the same lunch every day. The definition of insanity. We just needed to shake them out of the British lunchtime loop by giving them the truth, straight to the face.
Insight: Brits always say they’ll try something new for lunch — but never do.
Our creative needed to dramatise supermarket meal deals as the enemy. Attacking supermarkets directly didn’t feel right — the meal deal is just a small part of what they offer. So we tapped into Brits’ growing distrust of institutions like Big Pharma and Big Tech, and invented a new enemy: Big Sandwich. Big Sandwich claims a sandwich, crisps and a drink is a meal, thanks to those little yellow stickers. But the average Brit doesn’t know it’s a scam. A conspiracy. Because a bad sandwich and cheap crisps isn’t a meal — not to look at, eat, or even by some (slightly shaky) legal definitions. And if it’s not a meal, it can’t be a deal.
Our media approach was all-out war. Without a big supermarket budget, we had to be smart. We went straight to the top, calling on parliament to pass a “Lunchtime Meal Deal Reform Act” — exposing the Big Sandwich conspiracy and introducing our better-value alternative. Despite the tiny spend, Taco Bell’s takedown of Big Sandwich landed in national press and even made the news.
We used proximity out-of-home near Taco Bell stores to call out supermarket meal deals and highlight our superior offering. The message caught on, with influencers picking up the campaign and sparking real conversation about the supermarket scam.
But our main goal was putting lunch at Taco Bell on the map. Literally. We hacked Google Maps by photographing every Tesco in London, then uploading altered images with tailored Taco Bell ads into their location metadata. In under a week, these became the first images shown for every Tesco — making Taco Bell the top lunch choice, even in enemy territory.
Awareness?
Message?
Brand improve?
Consideration?
Business Impact?
Incremental revenue: £3,777,295.70
Estimated profit (8% QSR margin): £302,183.66
Campaign costs: £103,411.07 (media: £73,411, production: £30,000, agency: £0)
Profit ROI: £302,183.66 / £103,411.07 = 2.92:1
We gave Brits a reason to break free from boring lunches — doubling Taco Bell’s revenue, boosting value perception, and turning Big Sandwich into a national villain. Proof that a new strategy and campaign, even for a similar promotion, can drive radically different results. Judging at lunchtime? Skip the crisps. Try something hot, tasty and different. Just search “Taco Bell near me.” Your stomach will thank you.
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