1. The excellent Raffi Melkonian is back in action at CS (but not at flickr, unfortunately). He's here, concerned about Taco Bell's fourth meal advertising campaign, with its "clever" attempt to widen the market (!) by creating a new dimension for consumption. Or maybe he's not that concerned: "Obviously, I'm not in favor of any restrictions on their advertising, even if I thought it would cause a wave of children asking for fourth meals." Why not, Raffi?
2. This is also quite clever!
3. I got an email earlier today from an online reader of an Italian newspaper. He wanted to let me know that the paper had linked to one of my photographs in a story -- apparently he was concerned that my rights had been violated. Naturally I don't feel that a link (even a framed link) requires prior authorization, regardless of the Creative Commons license; but it's a little disturbing to learn that some people do!
raffi just doesn't grok fourth meal, but that's okay. the target audience for those ads understands exactly what they're about.
taco bell didn't invent fourth meal; it only came up with a catchy name for it. fourth meal has always around. people who work the day shift and are in bed by 10 do not and cannot partake of fourth meal, because it's not for them. it's for young people and night owls.
stop by your local steak n shake or 24-hour pancake house around 11pm or midnight on a weekend. you will likely find that the place is packed. these restaurants often get big rushes at late night from people who have been out at the bars or at sporting/social events.
hell, there's even a movie about fourth meal: harold and kumar go to white castle.
taco bell started staying open late for a reason, and it wasn't to create new customers from whole cloth.
You're right that most people really aren't eating 4 meals.
But I also think it's a little naive to say they're not trying to create new customers... obviously they didn't invent the idea of eating out late, but describing it as the fourth meal gives it added legitimacy for everybody, not just those who were eating late already. Do you really think they're not trying to build their market, or that they wouldn't be happy to feed anybody who's awake at that time, regardless of the number of meals they've eaten?
i said the reason wasn't to "create new customers from whole cloth". of course they're trying to build their brand and customer base. but the suggestion that taco bell invented a new meal in order to change eating habits is just silly; taco bell might be glamorizing bad eating habits, but i don't think they're so much encouraging more people to eat fourth meal as they are encouraging the people who already eat fourth meal to do so more often.
the point is that taco bell, wendy's, etc started extending their hours in the '90s in response to existing trends, not to manufacture new trends.
I understand what you're saying, but I think we have different ideas about the power or role of advertising. I certainly don't think it's silly to suggest that "taco bell invented a new meal in order to change eating habits" (although that is not what I said), because that's a pretty plausible scenario, whether it actually happened here or not.
Yes advertisers sometimes respond to existing trends... but existing trends also respond to advertisers.
i'm not sure you do understand what i'm saying... i know all about the power of advertising. it's difficult to be more cynical than i am in that regard. i wouldn't put it past an advertiser to invent a new meal (or a new holiday) to try to draw in new business. but that's not what happened here.
what i'm saying is that raffi's analysis of this campaign is way off because he apparently doesn't understand the target audience, and thus he doesn't understand what the campaign is trying to say. the ad's target market -- young people who are out late -- will immediately identify with the fourth meal concept because they already eat "meals" around that time anyway. now taco bell has given a name to their (arguably bad) eating habit, and there's great power in that, but the reason the name is so powerful is because "fourth meal" has been around for a long time but never had a good name until now.
you might not have said that taco bell was "inventing a new meal", but that is precisely what raffi said:
"The startling answer that Taco Bell has come up with to this problem is somewhere in between supersizing, and persuading people to come to Taco Bell. Invent an additional meal, trying to draw people who might open a bag of chips at night into a restaurant for a richer, far more profitable (to Taco Bell) experience."
thus the reason why it's so silly to suggest "that taco bell invented a new meal in order to change eating habits" is not because taco bell wouldn't do such a thing if they thought it would work, but because it is exactly the opposite of what actually happened in this case.
Hi guys - I'm busy getting ready to travel, so I'm not going to write a whole response now. As to Paul's question about regulation, though, my view is shaped by the fact that I'm very skeptical about restrictions on speech, even commercial speech. As to my misunderstanding of the campaign, other people have emailed me saying the same thing, and they probably know better than I do, but I think it's also clear that ad campaigns can have multiple goals. Anyway, I need to think about it.
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