SOMETHING PEOPLE ACTUALLY LOVE: CARNE ASADA IN THE SUPER BOWL
Taco Bell Lions
The Strategy for Steak Grilled Taquitos was “Authentic Carne Asada you can eat anywhere.” The thinking went that lions were the ultimate experts on meat eating, and famously live in remote locations. But we were also thinking big for the Super Bowl (in the time of Talking Animal spots), and went for a hook with Ricardo Montalban being an authentic roller of R’s.
TACO BELL - ASADA OF THE SERENGETI
DIR: Chuck Bennett CW: Me AD: Teddy Brown
FUN FACT: It’s my partner and I doing the voices. Taco Bell cast us after hearing us present the scripts dozens of times.
The Reaction was the real treat, in a pre-social media age. The Lions scored #15 on the USA Today Ad Meter (a big step up for Taco Bell at the time), got written up in Archive and Ad Age, but really seemed to catch on with people doing the quotes and voices.
All these years later, it’s nice to sometimes see the Lions listed with legit heavyweights on a list like “The Ten Funniest Super Bowl Commercials of the Last Ten Years” or “Super Bowl Commercials We’ll Never Forget.”
Also, long before Instagram Reels, people grabbed the audio and posted various YouTube projects. To me these videos are better than any award trophy.
The Execution, for the record, featured several different cuts (two 30s and several 15s), along with some nascent digital placements that we cut as bloopers from the shoot. An extremely early-days microsite effort, Carne Asada Improv, let people create custom Lions videos and send them to friends.
“Teeth” :30
Outtake - “Thanks, it’s fun.”
“Or the Guy” :15
Outtake - “Seems like it adds another layer.”
Outtake - “Let’s just leave it at that.”
The Results for Taco Bell included a 15% earnings per share ratio for the year, and Steak Grilled Taquitos enduring in people’s hearts on lists like 25 Discontinued Taco Bell Menu Items We Still Miss Today.
