Taco Bell Corp. has always pushed the marketing envelope.
That talking Chihuahua helped. Then there was the mashup with Frito-Lay Inc.’s Doritos that helped turn the business around. Food and fashion melded with a Taco Bell and Forever 21 collection, followed by weddings in the way of a $600 combo offered at the Taco Bell Cantina in Las Vegas and last month’s dip into hospitality with a Palm Springs hotel takeover that created The Bell: A Taco Bell Hotel and Resort.
Think Taco Bell marketing tapped out? Think again.
The fast-food chain’s release of a back-to-school collection is one part marketing stunt and, on a deeper level, a question of what defines a lifestyle brand anymore. Clearly, the term is not confined to a particular industry and fast food’s leading the pack as a case study.
Taco Bell’s back-to-school collection, totaling 19 stock-keeping units priced from $5 for stickers to $85 for glasses, includes T-shirts, leggings, joggers, long-sleeve tops, accessories, and even tech (a USB drive and charger designed like its hot sauce packets).
The collection—its first dip into entering the back-to-school fray—is sold via an online store, aptly named the Taco Shop.
Next Steps?
Whether the business has visions of retailing at this time remains to be seen.
The Taco Shop is still relatively young with new product not being designed or rolled out to the store at any sort of regular cadence yet. It’s currently stocked with quite the range in product categories: apparel, accessories, wedding, and party.
Supporting all of this output is the company’s in-house agency, Taco Bell Design. The staff, located within the company’s Irvine corporate headquarters in the Spectrum, handles design of the merchandise, visuals, packaging, and last month’s hotel among other things.
It’s a separate function from the work done around the marketing creative, which is handled by ad agency Deutsch LA, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. Marisa Thalberg last month stepped down as Taco Bell chief brand officer. Her responsibilities are now split between Senior Vice President of Marketing Melissa Friebe and Senior Vice President of Advertising and Brand Management Tracee Larocca.
