Deutsch LA’s budget to promote Taco Bell’s new Cravings menu just about matches the $1 price for the various fare that’s being offered in a couple of test markets.
The agency—which is on Taco Bell’s advertising roster along with the lead agency, Draftfcb in Irvine—skipped hiring actors and instead produced a radio ad using a robot-like, text-to-speech program in its in-house studio.
“Since Taco Bell is currently running its Dollar Cravings Menu in a few small markets, we were working with a limited budget,” Jeff Sweat, Deutsch LA’s senior vice president, said in an email. “To stretch Taco Bell’s dollar, and hammer home to consumers what you can typically get for a dollar, we tried to produce the radio spots for a dollar.”
The ad is currently being tested in just Kansas City, Mo., and Sacramento.
Taco Bell is contemplating expanding the promotion nationwide later this year, according to the company.
The Cravings menu has 12 items priced at $1, including new offerings such as the beefy cheese burrito, triple-layer nachos and spicy potato soft taco. The new menu will replace the existing value menu that features low-cost items like the 79-cent cheese roll-up and 89-cent crunchy taco. Taco Bell is owned by Yum! Brands Inc. of Louisville, Ky., which also owns KFC and Pizza Hut.
Boot Barn Ads to Feature Teens
Boot Barn Inc., a Western-apparel retailer headquartered in Irvine, has kicked off a search for high school rodeo stars to feature in its upcoming advertising campaign.
The winners will appear in print ads and outdoor billboards during the National High School Rodeo Finals in July in Rock Springs, Wyo.
Nominations for the Future Stars of Rodeo Campaign can be submitted through Sunday on the company’s website. Five boys and five girls who “excel in rodeo, school and life” will be chosen on June 24.
The company conducted a similar campaign last year.
“In 2012, over 800 high school rodeo athletes were nominated, which made selecting the top 10 very difficult,” said Amy Inabinet, the company’s director of marketing.
Acquity Group LLC of Irvine designed and developed Boot Barn’s website. The company’s advertising agency of record is Mindshare Creative of Newport Beach.
Freedom Adds Here, Sells Up North
The Orange County Register has started a new community newspaper that will be delivered to subscribers in Santa Ana every Thursday.
The Santa Ana Register will “have a small-town feel that brings out the personality, culture and sense of community and identity that exists in the city,” according to Aaron Kushner, the Register’s owner and publisher.
The daily Register started out as the Santa Ana Register in 1905.
The launch of the weekly that bears the daily’s original name is “part of a larger strategy to add depth to local content and improve the overall quality of the Register’s community newspaper portfolio,” according to the company.
Last year Kushner and his Trust 2100 LLC bought Freedom Communications Inc., which included the Register and a number of other dailies.
The new owners have since added staff and sections of coverage to the Register and switched the format of its 22 weeklies from tabloid-style to the larger broadsheet.
The Current, a community newspaper serving Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, is now published Monday through Friday instead of weekly. It competes with the Daily Pilot, a daily newspaper also focusing on the two coastal cities and Irvine. The Daily Pilot is part of the Los Angeles Times, which is ultimately owned by Tribune Co. of Chicago.
Kushner also has been selling off dailies, striking deals on undisclosed terms for the Colorado Springs Gazette and several smaller publications outside of California over the past year. The trend grew to include a couple of California properties last week with the sale of the Appeal-Democrat and Tri-County Newspapers in Marysville to Vista California News Media Inc., a privately owned publishing company affiliated with Illinois-based Horizon Publications Inc.
Freedom Communications also sold the Yuma Sun and the Porterville Recorder in April to Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers Inc., which also is part of Horizon Publications. The company’s other remaining newspapers besides the Register and its weeklies here are the Victorville Daily Press and Barstow Desert Dispatch.
