Dive Brief:
- Taco Bell is shaking up its marketing strategy in 2017 by spending less on digital and increasing spending on TV, said CMO Marisa Thalberg at 4A’s Transformation, per reporting by Campaign.
- Thalberg said Taco Bell loves digital, but “went down some garden paths” in 2016 and added that the traditional channels of TV and radio both still work for the brand.
- Taco Bell also made a recent change in bringing its restaurant marketing in-house with an internal design studio to handle store merchandizing, packaging and artwork for its restaurants. Taco Bell’s social media has always been mostly handled in-house.
Dive Insight:
Thalberg sat on a panel at 4A’s Transformation with marketers from Beats by Dre and STX Entertainment and was alone in announcing a shift away from digital, at least for this year. Beats is planning on spending less on TV and more on getting its content out there. STX, a film and entertainment studio, is going to spend less on radio and put budget into programmatic advertising.
However, Taco Bell isn’t alone among big brands that see value in TV. Recently ousted Coca-Cola CMO Marcos de Quinto told a beverage conference last December that the bottling giant saw its best ROI from TV advertising across all media channels, even while Coke was in the process of becoming a more digital-focused company across its enterprise.
Even with Taco Bell placing more marketing dollars into TV this year, the brand has had some digital successes in the past that it could build on going forward. For example, Taco Bell had a record-breaking Snapchat sponsored lens campaign for Cinco de Mayo last year with 224 million views over the efforts 24 hours, one of the more successful “garden paths” the brand meandered down last year for sure.
