Fight tyranny! End oppression! Eat breakfast at Taco Bell!
Wait, what?
Taco Bell’s 2015 short film, Routine Republic, paints a bleak picture: a dystopian society in which citizens are forced to eat “circular” McDonald’s-style breakfast sandwiches every morning. Oh, the horror.
But as you’ll see, two daring young adults are willing to stand up to the clown-faced regime and lead their fellow citizens to an enlightened society. You know, the kind of society in which everyone chooses to eat Taco Bell’s 710-calorie AM Crunchwrap (a hexagonal tortilla pocket filled with eggs, sausage, cheese and a hash brown).
Feelings about fast-food breakfast aside, this spot is very well done.
In the opening scenes, a distraught man goes through his morning routine amidst a sea of propaganda. A woman’s robotic voice drones over the loudspeakers reminding the cloistered, depressed population that “happiness is a circular breakfast” (a clear satirization of the golden arches’ reoccurring “happiness” advertising theme.)
The communist-era propaganda posters depict the civilization’s tyrannical leader; essentially, a sadistic Ronald McDonald – a clown with sunken eyes, plastered smile and wild red hair. Other posters contain messages bolstering the importance of routine and uniformity.
After meeting eyes in the breakfast line, the two rebels suddenly turn and walk, then run, towards freedom; dashing through streets of a dilapidated city that has elements of both District 12 and Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. Assailants slide down from their lookouts through Playhouse-style slides in pursuit. After navigating the abandoned streets of the abandoned, Orwellian setting, the escapees encounter the final obstacle standing between themselves and a hexagonal breakfast: a moat filled with McDonald’s ball-pit balls. (First of all, this is brilliant. Second, do ball-pits actually still exist? Hopefully not, they’re nasty.)
The unnamed hero and heroine exchange disgusted looks, then wade into the moat and crawl through the outer wall via a hole hidden behind a poster. Andy Dufresne would certainly be proud of the effort.
Cool ad, now what?
The latest jab at McDonalds by the Mexican-style chain comes a year after Taco Bell’s initial breakfast launch, when it cleverly invited a bunch of guys named Ronald McDonald to try its new product line.
Despite another creative effort, it remains unclear if Taco Bell will be able to create viable long-term competition to McDonalds’ morning offering.
Last August, CEO David Novak of YumFoods, the company that owns TacoBell, made an ambitious, albeit vague, statement about the brand’s breakfast line, “We’re not in it to be in breakfast; we’re in to win at breakfast.”
What “winning at breakfast” looks like exactly is unknown, but it seems Taco Bell has a ways to go. Last quarter, breakfast constituted about 7% of the chain’s total sales, which is right on target according to Novak. However, McDonald’s breakfast generates about 25% of its total sales with breakfast, and even Subway’s relatively new breakfast line-up is able to muster 10% of total sales.
Will the Breakfast Defector campaign prove more than just a clever ploy? Will ads like these actually result in McDonalds-like morning numbers?
It’s tough to know for sure, but the sight of a glowing Chicken Biscuit Taco drizzled in syrup makes it difficult to be optimistic.
