Taco Bell is turning its own fans and South By Southwest festival goers into music video directors for its ‘Feed The Beat’ SXSW 2013 project.
Continuing its marketing strategy based around leveraging user-generated content in its marketing campaigns, the Mexican-based fast food chain has partnered with Passion Pit and Wildcat! Wildcat! to create a crowd-sourced documentary film.
The two bands, both of which Taco Bell has sponsored the recent years via its Feed the Beat initiative which promotes emerging musicians, are performing concerts at the Hype Hotel at this year’s SXSW and these will be the principle subject of the movie (which is expected to open later this summer)
Fans are being asked to share their own photos and videos of themselves at both concerts using the #FeedtheBeat” hashtag on both Twitter and Vine.
Taco Bell, an official SXSW sponsor, has also linked with music blog aggregator The Hype Machine, which sponsors the Hype Hotel venue for six days during SXSW, to live-stream the concerts on the restaurant’s ‘Feed The Beat’ microsite
This brand- and consumer-customised live feed will include multiple camera angles of the concert actually shot by people in the crowd who have tagged their content for Taco Bell’s promotion.
The brand will then bring these consumer creative stills and clips together. By putting fans behind the lens, Taco Bell is supporting an experimental consumer-created documentary (under the umbrella direction of acclaimed documentary maker Sam Jones).
‘SXSW is the intersection of film, music and interactive, and the perfect place to bring Feed the Beat to our fans as the program reaches new heights this year,’ says Taco Bell’s chief marketing officer Brian Niccol.
‘Feed the Beat: SXSW 2013 is the definition of ‘living más,’ as this first-of-its-kind film empowers consumers to connect with us and other fans over shared passions and favourite artists, socially. On top of that, we are putting amazing talent from our Feed the Beat program on a huge stage reaching all our fans, both at SXSW and across the nation.’
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2013 sees SXSW start just one day after Taco Bell’s nationwide launch of its most recent new flavor of Doritos Locos Tacos: Cool Ranch.
The new product will be served to fans for free all week at the Hype Hotel.
This user-generated, crowd-sourced approach follows similar tactics used by fellow Yum brand Pizza Hut and by beverage giant Pepsi at this year’s Super Bowl.
Both also invited consumers to send in clips of themselves and then spliced these into commercials.
Pizza Hut’s mimicked a quarterback’s pre-snap ‘hut, hut’,
While Pepsi’s aped Beyonce-inspired dance moves,
But Taco Bell’s suggest more creative credibility in its attempt to shoot a fully-fledged movie documentary.
Of course, the combination of films and social media have formed the core of previous Taco Bell’s ads – including last year’s launch of Doritos Locos Tacos which featured the Passion Pit song ‘Take a Walk’ which played over dozens of shots of the tacos taken from real users of photo-sharing platform Instagram.
While the band ‘Fun’, another alumni of Taco Bell’s Feed The Beat programme, provided the track ‘We Are Young’ which was recorded in Spanish for this year’s Taco Bell ‘Viva Young’ Super Bowl spot.
Since it began Feed the Beat back in 2005, Taco Bell has sponsored 100s of musicians and bands including Andrew WK, Gym Class Heroes and Girl Talk.
Links
Feed The Beat Website
http://www.feedthebeat.com/tbsxsw/
Taco Bell Facebook
Taco Bell Twitter
Taco Bell YouTube
Passion Pit Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/passionpitofficial?ref=ts&fref=ts
Passion Pit Twitter
Wildcat Wildcat Twitter
RSA Twitter
South By Southwest 2013
Hype Hotel SXSW Schedule Website
http://schedule.sxsw.com/?lsort=venue_all_days&venue=Hype+Hotel
