Will Consumers Have a Real Beef With Taco Bell?

March 3, 2011 — -- I was sitting in Dr. Paulo Francini's classroom in Florence, Italy, as a college exchange student when a discussion broke out about the "polli enteri," whole dead chickens that hung in markets throughout Italy. We Americans thought they were disgusting, at best, and perhaps even unsanitary.

Dr. Francini explained that as a kid accompanying his mother to market, he had learned how to determine the health of the chicken and that it was in America where he grew concerned because there was no way to figure out where our shapeless, processed and plastic-wrapped birds came from or what condition the bird was in before it met its demise.

Fast-food chain Taco Bell, accused of selling taco filling made mostly of filler, began an aggressive advertising campaign Friday to assure consumers that its product is largely (88 percent) beef. Will this risky strategy assuage the average Taco Bell consumer or increase scrutiny of the chain that has not been afraid to "think outside the bun" with its advertising and marketing strategies?

Taco Bell, the chain that introduced us to the drive-thru diet with the caption "Eating Better Just Got Easier" and now on the offense against claims that its taco meat is just 35 percent beef, is combating the assertion with an ad campaign that features employees stating the product is 88 percent beef and offering an 88-cent crunchwrap supreme. Surprisingly, the spots don't take place in stores.

There is an on-screen message explaining that the people in the spots are real employees. The employees themselves are in uniform and are in front of a seamless white backdrop that places them not in a restaurant or for that matter, anywhere. They assert the product's beef content and one employee says, "I'm going to get one myself."

They might have been better served by taking the real employees out of their uniforms so people could better relate to them and putting them somewhere like a real restaurant or an actual location. They also could have trotted out an independent expert or two and at least one independent study. With a pending lawsuit, perhaps using the situation to lower the price and hawk the product at an even cheaper price might come back to haunt them.

Late Tuesday, Taco Bell filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in a Los Angeles federal court.

"Our motion to dismiss this frivolous lawsuit speaks for itself, so we are focusing on vigorously defending our brand's reputation and providing consumers the facts about our seasoned beef," said a Taco Bell spokesperson. "Our seasoned beef recipe calls for 88 percent premium USDA inspected beef and 12 percent seasonings, spices, water and other ingredients to provide taste, texture, moisture, and quality."