On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell advertised in several newspapers that they purchased the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and renamed Taco Bell to “Taco Liberty Bell”. Media outlets went crazy reporting on this breaking story thinking it was true. However, the public was outraged by this considering the date was April Fool’s Day.
The mastermind behind this campaign was a man by the name of David Paine. He is the creator of a nonprofit that supports 9/11 as a federal day of service, “MyGoodDeed”. He was hired by Jonathan Blum, head of Taco Bell’s marketing team to help with an ad to reach out to younger rebellions. Paine and his company planned this event out for two weeks and noticed April Fool’s day was around the corner. They brainstormed different names for “taco” and “bell” and came up with “Taco Liberty Bell”. Paine sent the idea to Taco Bell’s ad agency, Bozell and they created the newspaper ad featuring the liberty bell and the saying “ In an effort to help reduce the national debt, Taco Bell is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. It will now be called the Taco Liberty Bell and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country’s debt.” (Klein and Klein) Bozell paid $50k to place the ad in “The Inquirer”. Little did they know that the ad would be shown in major publishers such as the “New York Times”, “Washington Post”, and “USA Today” to name a few. They thought they could pass it by the public but knew they would have a challenge by having some skeptics in their way. They had to come up with creative ways to try to persuade the naysayers that this was really true. The pages were received on March 30, published on March 31 due to the production running behind, and the night of March 31 is when they were sent to news stations for release. April 1st came and their plan seemed to be working, people were believing this was actually true and some companies were cracking their own jokes about their companies. After Taco Bell had their share of fun, they were ready to confess that it wasn’t true. Philadelphia's mayor at the time, Ed Rendell, called the company to send cash to help with the construction of the Liberty Bell pavilion at that time. Taco Bell then donated $50k for the preservation of the bell. The stunt was a huge hit that it was featured on “NBC Nightly News”. It worked because in the late 1990s, companies were starting to sponsor so Taco Bell wanted this to be a goofy and creative way to grab the attention of young people. While this seemed to be controversial, I think it was clever and very creative that someone could think of an idea that would have made sense. The liberty bell is shown in the logo and they use “bell’ in the company name. Before researching this story, I thought the liberty bell had something to do with the fast food chain. If I wasn’t two years old at the time, I’d be one of those people to believe it was true.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2024
Categories |