How Taco Bell made that terrifying giant taco Snapchat lens

Taco Bell is letting everyone live out their secret Cinco de Mayo wishes by becoming a taco.

To celebrate the holiday, Taco Bell purchased its first selfie lens that transforms people’s heads into giant crunchy tacos with a dollop of the chain’s Diablo spicy sauce dribbled on top.

The filter — all crunchy head-shell and bulging eyes — is terrifying sane people, and is hit among its younger followers.

Here’s a sampling of reactions, mostly positive:

While getting a taco at Taco Bell takes minutes, Ryan Rimsnider, senior manager of social media for the Yum!-owned brand, told Digiday creating this took six weeks and was created in-house.

“We’re the world’s biggest taco fan and what better day to celebrate that,” he told Digiday. “We wanted to delight taco fans everywhere with an experience that we’ve been thinking about for quite some time.”

This is Taco Bell’s first selfie lens, although it’s no stranger to Snapchat. It previously used the app to promote its new menu item during this year’s Super Bowl and regularly creates stories on its own account that has more than 225,000 followers.

The filter, Rimsnider said, was just another way to appeal to a social-savvy audience: “It was a fun surprise to start their day; and these celebratory, highly engaging and interactive moments worth capturing are what they live for.”

https://digiday.com/?p=176279

More in Marketing

Uncertainty over TikTok’s U.S. future splinters creators and agencies

With the possible removal of TikTok in the U.S. as early as January, creators and agencies fall on both sides of the issue: either believing it will happen or confident that the ban won’t go through in the end

In Graphic Detail: How Sia’s Clip It launch shows the power of Roblox for musicians

Sia’s Clip It integration into Roblox is the first time a prominent mainstream musical artist has placed their music and branding inside the space.

Marketers have a new audience to worry about — large language models

Tech firms are creating new ways to understand how large language models perceive their brands.