Storyboard: Taco Del Mar Plays Bait and Switch

Having gained fans with its “attitude” campaign, Taco Del Mar shifts its advertising focus to the menu.

By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 1/1/2006

A misunderstanding, a sly insult and diners filmed eating in the restaurant looking confused. That’s the offbeat way Taco Del Mar chose to approach its first product-oriented advertising in years.

Between 2002 and 2004, Taco Del Mar’s advertising, created by Seattle-based ad agency Horton, Lantz & Low, was brand-oriented. While it included food shots, the tagline, “Discover Your Inner Baja,” underscored the Seattle-based chain’s nontraditional Mexican roots and hip attitude.

A series of ads featured customers unleashing their inner Baja all over town, such as a mom who tossed her groceries aside and jumped on the Slip N’ Slide with her kids while wearing her business suit. Tom Horton, president and CEO of Horton, Lantz, says the ads suggested that “inner Baja was the place where everything is just right,” and that Taco Del Mar was the place that fed the inner Baja. They emphasized the concept’s beach culture, which is the culture that originally developed the fish taco. The strategy worked. Taco Del Mar’s systemwide sales increased from $15 million in 2001 to $25 million in 2003 to an estimated $53 million this year.

Sea Saw
With that campaign laying the foundation for the Taco Del Mar brand, the company has moved on to the next step in its advertising strategy. It has developed a campaign focused more on its food. “We had the signature product, our fish taco, so we said, ‘Where we do we go from here?’” says Neal Hollingsworth, vice president of franchise sales and marketing. “We wanted to put more ‘Del Mar’ in Taco Del Mar.”

In Spanish, “del mar” means “of the sea,” and the chain wanted to strengthen its seafood offerings.

The answer was offering shrimp as an option for its tacos, burritos and enchiladas. Taco Del Mar hadn’t offered shrimp before and tested the products for six months, with some caution because the items are above the chain’s average $6.80 check. The chain competes more directly with fresh-Mexican concepts like Chipotle and Baja Fresh than Taco Bell and Taco John’s, so its average check can be higher than the average QSR.

“If other places added shrimp, they’d have glorious beauty shots of plump shrimp. Other places would animate the shrimp and make him talk,” Horton explains. “Instead, we built the whole campaign around some kind of odd, modern misunderstanding.”

In the TV spot, the cashier takes an order from a short customer. When she asks if he wants chicken, beef or shrimp, he thinks she’s calling him a shrimp. The commercial takes another twist when the man does order shrimp, and he goes from being the butt of a joke to being the hero. Enthusiastic employees carry him throughout the store, celebrating how much they love shrimp and their shrimp-loving customers. Other customers look on with bewilderment, rather than with the faux cheer most diners sport in TV ads.

“If you yuk it up too much, it is not as believable. We wanted it to seem like this really happened,” Horton explains of the diners’ expressions.

The Small Guy
The spot was created in both 15- and 30-second versions, which gives the chain greater flexibility with its small $1 million ad budget. Franchisees pay just 1 percent of sales into the chain’s ad fund.

What is different about the “Shrimp” spot is that it is the first time that actors have had speaking parts in the chain’s TV commercials; in the past, the ads used store employees. Employees of both Taco Del Mar and Horton, Lantz filled most of the nonspeaking roles.

“They are not overly produced to look like big national spots because we think they get a little more hometown recognition,” Hollingsworth says. “We look more local. Consumers like it.”

Hollingsworth acknowledges the chain took a risk in switching from a branding to product focus in its TV ads. “The liability was, if people do not like the [shrimp] product, we’ve lost a lot during our high summer sales season,” he says of the initial August launch of the shrimp campaign. “We do not like to have all of our eggs in one basket. We knew we better darn well have a great product.”

In Self-Defense
Taco Del Mar complemented the TV spots with radio ads, table tents, window clings and employees wearing “I love shrimp” T-shirts as they do on TV. Same-store sales increased 7 percent to 11 percent while the ads aired. They ran for an initial six weeks starting Aug. 15 and will air as franchisees deem necessary in their markets. And the chain says shrimp sales continue to be brisk, despite some backlash to the ads.

“There were blogs that said, ‘Taco Del Mar hates short people,’” Hollingsworth says. But Horton agrees that Taco Del Mar’s target audience, 25- to 49-year-olds, knows how to put the concept’s messages in perspective. “Good creative that resonates will offend somebody a little bit,” he says.

Since the success of shrimp, the company plans to use TV to introduce two—as of now unannounced—new products to the menu in 2006.

The menu additions will come with unit growth. In 2006 Taco Del Mar plans to open 200 restaurants through its master-developer franchise plan. It will likely run ads where the chain has at least eight to 10 units, including Portland, Ore., Santa Fe, N.M., and Phoenix.

“Shrimp” Length: 30 seconds
1. Waitress: All right. And what can I get for you...	2. ...sir?
3. Short customer: I’d like a couple of tacos, please.	4. Waitress: What kind? Chicken? Beef? Shrimp?
5. Short customer: Shrimp? Waitress: Shrimp!	6. Voice-over: Surf on in for our delicious new Baja shrimp with spicy chipotle sauce.
7. Wait staff: Woo! Hoo! Voice-over: It’s a little wild, a lot of taste.	8. Rippin’ Shrimp Tacos and Mondo Shrimp Burritos. Only at Taco Del Mar. Where everyone loves their shrimp.