McDonald’s is Big Brother to people in fast food. Got it.
Chipotle got people to watch long-form ads about their cause. Got it.
Taco Bell has been tearing it up in social media and content creation the last few years. Yes.
My only thing about this…
…is that it doesn’t quite have the same spirit as the other Taco Bell social media greatest hits. Ignoring its resemblance to the famous Apple 1984 ad, and the fact that the cause is a lot more “advertising strategy-ish” than Chipotle’s Back-to-the-Farm-Basics longform ads, this ad just isn’t very fun. Is it? Even though I enjoy Heath Ledger’s Joker-references and the poke of a sort-of-big-guy at a bigger guy (a little), I feel the oppressive atmosphere is very effective. It’s oppressive. Will people really watch the whole thing?
To me, this is an example of different visions for a single entity: you can a different creative sensibility between this, the army of Ronalds, the second-year Locos Tacos intro, and so on. And a different sensibility from their best tweets.
It’s hard to be consistent across every medium. But it’s kind of a big deal. People only know what they see, and if what they see (as discussed in Selling Eating Chapter 7: Brand Personality: A Consistent Voice Is A Sneaky Advantage) varies from one touchpoint to another, they start to wonder if they ever really knew the brand at all.
