Fun Marketing Is Fun

How about we talk about something amusing for a change?

Tacos are good any night of the week, but our family is partial to Tuesdays. Photo by Quin Engle on Unsplash

I really love fun marketing. On Tuesday, May 16, Taco Bell kicked off a PR and marketing campaign aimed at “freeing” Taco Tuesday. It turns out that Taco Tuesday is actually a registered trademark of a chain of restaurants in the Midwest called Taco Johns. I had no idea that Taco Tuesday was a trademark that someone owned. 

Incidentally I also had no idea that there was a chain of restaurants called Taco Johns. I note this because one thing that marketers always need to be aware of when contemplating a campaign aimed at a competitor is that you can actually raise the profile of your rival. And that fact did not go unnoticed by the folks at Taco Johns. While they published a statement criticizing the Taco Bell “lawsuit” their CEO also told the AP that “it’s nice to be noticed.” In fact, they took the opportunity to run a week long “every day is Taco Tuesday” promotion to capitalize on the attention. 

It is not, one should say, a lawsuit. Taco Bell has petitioned the US Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel the federal trademark. They are seeking no damages and they do not want the trademark themselves, as they make clear in an FAQ. They just want to “liberate” the phrase so that everyone can, in their well-known tagline, “live más!”

The campaign itself is well done. You can find the press release here which includes a link to a petition on Change.org. They did a commercial with LeBron James where “Tuesday” gets bleeped every time he tries to say “Taco Tuesday.” They turned the petition – the actual legal document in all its lawyerly glory – into a full-page newspaper ad and a billboard. And, of course, shared all the media assets on a Google Drive folder to make it easy for the campaign to spread far and wide. 

I love these kinds of marketing campaigns. Fun, silly, and totally on brand. And while this might be characterized as a stunt – which can have real risks – the way they’ve done this seems to ensure all upside, with no real downside. If they win the petition, great, they get to start using a great piece of copy and probably generate more PR. But do they even care? The PR for the petition itself was great with clips from Salon, Food & Wine, Axios, NPR, and the Guardian, among many others, including both restaurant and legal trade publications. 

If they lose, so what? The brand impression payoff is likely to far outweigh the lawyer fees. Also, the attention to Taco Johns – a 270-restaurant chain – is not much to worry about when you have 7,200 stores around the country. In fact, I think the fact that Taco Johns got a bit of attention alongside the gentle rebuke mitigates the one possible downside to Taco Bell – being seen as a brute trying to bully a much smaller rival.

And as a mom who serves some kind of taco most Tuesdays – I’m here for it.