TVC: Taco Bell – Routine Republic
By Malay Desai From: USA, by Deutsch LA To introduce its new breakfast menu and launch its biscuit taco to take on competitor McDonald’s, Taco Bell has unveiled a multimedia campaign, which instigates people to ‘defect’ from their routine. The film, titled Routine Republic, shows a man waking up in a refugee-camp like place, to incessant announcements of ‘Happiness is eating the same breakfast.’ While in queue to pick up burgers, he gets a secret message with a hexagon on it and the word ‘defect.’ Alongwith a female accomplice, he darts to escape the walled place, the joker-faced police machinery chasing them. They are successful and eventually reach a place with hexagonal tacos, also having instigated others to escape. Why we Like? McDonald’s golden arches have dominated America’s 30 billion USD fast-food breakfast market, but that doesn't say much about the quality of their microwaved eggs inside the same ol’ buns. Taco Bell, sitting at just 6 per cent of the said market share, has taken up arms against what it infers as tyranny, and it’s not for the first time. Exactly in this week last year, Taco Bell had hit headlines by cheekily featuring real-life ‘Ronald McDonalds’ trying out their breakfast menu. This time, they haven’t been as kind. TB’s new campaign seems to be the result of a well-prepared war-room brainstorm, and their centerpiece film is its finest propaganda in long. The villain here is the market leader that perhaps knowingly dishes out ‘sameness’ (because its consumers want it?) every single day. The campaign’s budget lends much meat to the film that’s seeking to be revolutionary – there’s elaborate production with extras, locations and details such as showing the machines of the tyrannical rulers of Routine Republic. The idea is simple: break the monotony that this communist-like food giant is drilling into your head, and run away to fresher ideas. TB’s new biscuit taco, which can be filled with eggs, sausage, cheese, chicken and jalapeno honey sauce truly sounds like a cause worthy to rebel for. There have been no attempts made to be subtle here, with every face of the ‘rulers’ of this republic resembling that of McDee’s mascot. And with grey, drab imagery, fascist-like posters such as ‘circle good, hexagon bad’ and ‘eat our breakfast’, Deutsch LA has made it clear who’s at fault for millions in America waking up to the same burgers from long. The campaign, integrated with the same ‘defect to us’ tone on its microsite and social properties, packs a punch by making the McDee loyalist rethink his priorities. Ambitious! One last thing Taco Bell, in case your Indian agents of change are reading this – it’s been slightly long (over six months) since your flagship product, er, the taco, has been missing. Kindly address, we’ve already defected to less tyrannical aloo paratha and bhurji pav. (To watch this film, feed this easy link –‘bit.ly/April6_viewtube’into your browser) Social Newsfeed Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe iOS users, check out Periscope by Twitter For those with their heads in the sand, it seemed like an April fool’s gag when Twitter launched a live-streaming app Periscope last week. But the geeks knew, and so should you, that here’s another service that’s changing the social media landscape. Currently only for iOS users, Periscope is an app that lets you broadcast live video to the world. Which means that you can live-broadcast a sunset, a game’s critical moments or um, as the Internet will, cute things puppies and kittens do. The good thing is that its very first update has gotten rid of new follower notifications and automatically puts broadcasts from people you know on the top of your ‘Watch’ tab. ‘We built Periscope to let people discover the world through someone else’s eyes,’ the team said in a blog post. Already, Hollywood celebrities and brands have already flocked to the new medium and it will be interesting to see how this impacts Vine and SnapChat. PS: Android users, wait for it. Popeye likes this Also, Twitter has a competitor for Storify I’ve told you guys earlier of Storify, the app that made millions out of letting social media users to curate and flesh out news stories by picking others’ tweets and posts. Now, after being announced in February and tested by several media organisations, Twitter has launched its competitor for it, ‘Curator’, which allow media publishers to search, filter and put together relevant tweets/Vines and tell a story. This of course is pretty much the same thing that Storify does but apparently Curator will allow more customisation and greater access to data of course, with daddy Twitter behind it. Some uses I can think of for this, if you’re a media house – display live-tweet reactions during a show, filter responses to a debate and tell a ‘reaction’ story based on your core news story. ArnabJee likes this YepMe’ssocial actics fall flat too If you watched the World Cup over the past 45 days, you would know of the familiar urge to ruthlessly strangle one of the YepMe models that appeared and talked relentlessly in-between wickets and overs. The upstart fashion label, having SRK as a brand ambassador was ridiculed much over social media during the tournament and it seems its FB/Twitter handles didn't do much to firefight, rather added to our misery. Unlike its premise of bringing ‘fresh’ to fashion, its approach on social media was the same ol’ ‘what’s your definition of fresh fashion’ et al. There was the usual contest to which our compulsive tweeters flocked to while on their massive Facebookpage, I only see plugs to buy their tees, kurtis and denims. #fireyouragency! Myntra likes this
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