Taco Bell casts customers in a ‘cheesy’ throwback ad

Taco Bell Canada has loaded up its latest ad campaign with a healthy helping of cheese.

Launched Monday, the campaign features nine Taco Bell customers decked out in ’90s-style outfits, pitching themselves as singles looking for a date. The 60-second spot, “Super Cheesy Dating,” spoofs VHS-era video personals and lays on the “cheese” in a nod to Taco Bell’s latest menu addition, the Quesalupa — a quesadilla and chalupa hybrid with a cheese filled shell.

Veronica Castillo, head of marketing and R&D for Taco Bell Canada, told Marketing the brand cast the commercial via an open casting call on social media earlier this year. She said the brand is constantly looking for ways to incorporate its most loyal customers into its marketing campaigns. For example, last summer Taco Bell chose 12 customers to participate in a firefighter-themed shoot for a calendar promoting its Fiery DLT taco.

This time around, the customers played an even greater role in the campaign shoot. The company flew the cast out from across the country a day ahead of the shoot and had them meet with a stylist to choose their own outfits, hair and makeup, and to offer suggestions for the spot’s script. Though the spot itself is a spoof, Castillo said all of the facts are true – the customers go by their real names, offer real factoids about themselves and are all really single.

Like the brand’s recent search for a Snapchat host, this campaign was inspired in part by Taco Bell Canada’s customer advisory panel; a group of young Taco Bell “superfans” the company meets with quarterly to discuss new products and potential advertising concepts. Castillo said the panel loved all forms of nostalgia, which helped inform the throwback ad.

The final cut of the spot, by Grip, is currently running on broadcast in 30 and 15-second formats. There 60-second cut is running on social media, as are 15-second spots that feature individual daters. Those shortened spots are running on social media via a geo-targeted buy in the featured customer’s local market.

The ad is also running as pre-roll on gaming, lifestyle, entertainment, sports and women’s verticals and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Mediacom handled the media buy.

Castillo said the lion’s share of the media budget was going to television. While conventional wisdom may suggest millennials have abandoned the format, she said Taco Bell’s research has shown many consumers in its core demo of 18 to 24-year-olds still live at home, have access to cable television and are avid TV watchers.

The campaign runs for 14 weeks.