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

Hyve Group buys the Possible conference, and will add a meeting element to it in the future

Hyve Group, which owns such events as ShopTalk and FinTech Meetup, has agreed to purchase Beyond Ordinary Events, the organizing body behind Possible.

Agencies and marketers point to TikTok in the running to win ‘first real social Olympics’

The video platform is a crucial part of paid social plans this summer, say advertisers and agency execs.

Where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on big tech issues

The next U.S. president is going to have a tough job of reining in social media companies’ dominance and power enough to satisfy lawmakers and users, while still encouraging free speech, privacy and innovation.