The
Taco Liberty Bell was an
April Fool's Day joke played by
fast food restaurant chain Taco
Bell.
On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in
seven leading U.S. newspapers including The New York Times announcing that
they had purchased the Liberty Bell
to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the
"Taco Liberty Bell". Thousands of people protested before it
was revealed at noon April 1 that the sale was a
hoax.
White
House Press Secretary Mike McCurry responded that
the federal government was also "selling the Lincoln
Memorial
to Ford Motor Co. and renaming it the
Lincoln-Mercury Memorial."
Influence
The prank was considered a successful advertising gambit by those
involved. David Paine, Founder of PainePR, the public relations
agency that executed the campaign, called it "the most successful
project I've been involved with". The campaign cost was just
$300,000, but it generated an estimated $25 million equivalent in
free publicity, with a sales increase exceeding $1 million for the
first two days in April. Paine, however, feels that the climate
today is much more cautious and a comparable prank is not possible.
The origin is credited to the mother of then-CEO John Martin.
The stunt has also been listed as one of the top hoaxes or
marketing stunts over the years.
Entrepreneur Magazine includes it
among its "Top 10 Successful Marketing Stunts". The
Museum of Hoaxes ranks it as #4 on its list
of the "Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time".
According to marketing author Thomas L. Harris, the stunt worked
because "in today's world ... almost everything is
corporate-sponsored", making the announcement believable even for
"a national historic monument." The company coined the term
"publitisement" to describe its stunt, "breaking through
advertising clutter to achieve massive awareness" for its then-new
"Nothing Ordinary About It" ad campaign. From the other side,
activist
Paul Rogat Loeb lamented
that the hoax "felt too real for comfort" in an era "when every
value, ideal, and public symbol has a profit-seeking
sponsor."
See also
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