• by Karl Greenberg , July 9, 2009

Those activities are just part of a multi-year plan to focus media strategy on sports, according to Deborah Myers, vice president of media services and promotions for the Irvine, Calif.- based company. She says that next week the company will introduce for the first time a two-minute-long TV ad especially created for and premiering during the All Star Game on Tuesday. She says it will run once in the game; henceforth, only a :30 will be aired on TV. Marketing Daily talks with Myers about that new ad as well as the company's NBA involvement.

Q: What is the new two-minute spot about?

A: First of all, this is a first. I have been in the business a lot of years, but don't remember running an ad like this. All of our commercials are always in a humorous tone with a wink -- we like to make fun of ourselves. This spot very effectively communicates that it is all about the Roosevelts -- meaning FDR -- whose face is on the dime. We talk about our 99-cent menu in a very entertaining way. We will introduce it in a dedicated ad pod.

Sports are the foundation of our media investment. We have been incredibly pleased with our relationship with Major League Baseball, of which we are official QSR. When we started "dating" the NBA, we saw that as a perfect in terms of fan base.

Q: When did sports become central to Taco Bell's media strategy?

A: I'm a believer in evolution, not revolution -- so we started making a major conscious strategic shift in fourth-quarter 2001, and by 2004, we sort of came into our own with it.

Q: What sports are you involved in now?

A: Our two league sponsorships are NBA and MLB; for the past three years we have been official QSR of the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl and championship. We are also official QSR of the summer and Winter X Games on ESPN, and while we don't have league deals or rights, we are major players in college football, and we dabble in NFL and NASCAR as well. One of the reasons we love sports is that our target is adults 18 to 34.

Q: Why such a male and sports focus?

A: While our customer base is fairly even between men and women, men are more challenging to reach media-wise -- if you look at TV in general, it skews 60% female. But sports are a great place to reach them, and women also watch a lot of sports, as well. If anything, when we made this shift several years ago, we believed that our media investment should follow eyeballs -- what people are watching. Without sports, we would be too heavily skewed female. And sports ratings are far more stable, and sports are virtually DVR-proof. We describe it as the ultimate reality show. We are a major advertiser -- we run in around 15 cable networks, on prime-time TV, but when we go to build our media plan, sports is really the foundation.

When spring baseball comes along and the NBA finals come in June and the All Star Game in July, we can count on those rating points, unlike a network TV buy where they announce schedule and then spend the year changing it. Broadcast buys have ratings erosion; sports don't.

Q: How are you going to activate sponsorship?

A: We have every intention of activating the sponsorship aggressively, including on the All Star game as well as post-season NBA. Right now, the ink is barely dry [on the NBA partnership], so we are in process of getting together with them and their marketing people to come up with what we will do.

I can assure you we are not a company that goes and buys rights to things that we don't use aggressively to market our products.