With American consumers stubbornly reluctant to spend any more of their family budgets on fast food these days, major QSR chains have been struggling with how to get them to loosen their pursestrings a bit. A lot of the brands' emphasis has been on broadening "value menus" that provide a lot of food for relatively little cash.

But chain executives also know that there's nothing to get the digestive juices of fast-food customers flowing like new products. They look at Taco Bell's success over the last year or so with Doritos Locos Tacos and understand that boffo store traffic and renewed sales momentum may be just a hit product or two away.

And another thing: If there's a "day part" and an associated menu that the brand has under-exploited, that could comprise a significant new opportunity as well. Again, look at what Yum's Taco Bell brand has done in trying out breakfast.Continue reading...

Taco Bell is trying to re-establish its "value" chops with America's fast feeders with a new "$1 Cravings Menu" that re-tethers the brand to the magical single-greenback pricepoint; it's being tested now in Kansas City and Sacramento, and a national rollout this summer is in the cards.

The brand also promises more limited-time offerings such as the 99-cent Beefy Crunch Burrito that it is bringing back on May 23.

Taco Bell marketers believe the chain is getting squeezed out of consumers' minds by all the added buzz in the QSR industry these days about new "value-menu" plays by McDonald's and other giants, as the entire business struggles to get the cash-strapped American consumer back in an eating-out mood.

"There's been a lot of press on a lot of brands choosing to bring out value menus," Brian Niccol, Taco Bell's chief markerting and innovation officer, said on a conference call with reporters Thursday. "We think about that completely differently: Shame on us if what we have to do is create a 'value menu,' because at Taco Bell, in the end, the whole menu is 'value.'"Continue reading...

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A little over a year ago, Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Tacos hit the market. There was no way to predict that the new menu item would become a phenomenon of sorts—selling one million per day last year. Neither Taco Bell or FritoLay, Doritos' parent company, could let the potential of massive sales slip from their fingers, so they did it again, launching a Cool Ranch version earlier this month to much fanfare. 

The launch created a nationwide spectacle as ravenous consumers scoured local Taco Bell locations for the updated version, which the company teased with an 'early release' (which ended up backfiring). Unaffected, the actual launch went off without a hitch, with millions of customers walking away finger-licking happy. "Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos have been one of the most anticipated new menu items we've launched, and will be the biggest in our company history," says Rob Poetsch, a Taco Bell spokesman, in an email to MSN. "We're pleased with the overwhelmingly positive reaction from our fans, in fact, we've seen twice as many social media conversations in the first few days we launched."Continue reading...

Emboldened by the performance of its ads during the Super Bowl, riding the wave of the massive marketing push for its Doritos Locos Tacos partnership with Taco Bell and bolstered by PepsiCo's increasing moves toward global brand platforms, Doritos is adopting a new, more consistent look across the 37 countries where the chips are sold and is launching a new worldwide marketing campaign.

Doritos is planning to punctuate its new plans with a four-story-high, Twitter-controlled rap concert (hashtag: #boldstage) on its boldly branded vending-machine stage at SXSW next week.

"For the Bold" is the tagline for Doritos' first global marketing campaign. It'll start with the U.S. launch of a new ad on cable TV networks beginning in mid-month.

Called "Best Summer Job," the commercial will tell the story of a "college-aged valet making bold choices which lead to an epic joyride, inspired by Doritos chips," as Ram Krishnan, VP of marketing for PepsiCo's Frito-Lay North America, told Ad Age.Continue reading...

Last month, Taco Bell gave away the fact that its next flavor of Doritos Locos Tacos would be Cool Ranch and tweeted that the secret was "out of the bag." The problem is that today, when the chain actually began dispensing the new product to QSR cognoscenti, some Taco Bell outlets couldn't put enough Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos in the bag to satisfy early adopters.

Taco Bell has said that the widely anticipated next variety in the Doritos Locos Tacos phenomenon would be introduced nationwide tomorrow in its biggest marketing campaign ever. However, it wanted to add to the advance buzz created by its announcement on February 13, stoked by the product's appearance in a TV ad during the Oscars and further fed by a variety of social media-savvy teaser videos online.

So the brand let fans know via Twitter and Facebook this week that they would be rewarded today with "a special 'Fan Day' in which they can visit their local Taco Bell and buy a Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco the day before it officially launches on March 7. All they have to do is ask." It was a way, a brand spokeswoman told brandchannel, "of giving back."Continue reading...

Murmurs were afoot early on the street and on the tweet, thanks to Taco Bell's Facebook hint that fans should head to a pop-up store at New York City's Ariston Flowers in the Chelsea neighborhood, setting the Twitterverse aflutter.

The product: new Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos. The password: ask for the blue bouquet.

But just when things began to heat up at the flower shop, Taco Bell also was letting the whole country know about what likely will be its biggest new-product announcement of 2013. The Yum! Brands chain is hoping to tap into the same fervor for Cool Ranch as it did a year ago for the original Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos Locos Tacos, which kicked off a frenzy new Doritos-based-shell franchise.

And if the blue nail polish on today's Facebook announcement wasn't hint enough, Taco Bell is wooing the cool kids to Cool Ranch by appealing to hipsters — judging by its Super Bowl commercial, as a mindset and not necessarily just millennials.Continue reading...

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