Sorting out the ROI associated with integrated marketing campaigns can be harder than eating a chili cheese burrito without staining your shirt.
Lucky for Taco Bell that we employed the Critical Mention “commercial zapper” today when the restaurant chain’s edgy “Ronald McDonald” TV ad campaign started trending in social and attracting attention among broadcast news outlets.
As of 9:24 a.m. ET, just hours after the release of the ad that features dozens of men named Ronald McDonald, Taco Bell has been mentioned on television more than 63 times — and not in its own paid commercials.
Using Critical Mention media monitoring software, we were able to exclude searches containing keywords found within the ad, demonstrating earned-media mentions across local and national TV programming with some mighty impressive audience and publicity values:
- Cumulative Estimated Audience: 13,850,108
- Cumulative Estimated Publicity Value: USD $1,306,589
We don’t have any idea what Taco Bell spent on its ad buy, but we’re betting the company’s CMO is pretty excited about the editorial coverage, social sharing and word-of-mouth buzz associated with the campaign in the first hours after it began.
Of course there’s the chance that lawyer bills could exceed this publicity value, but that’s only if another restaurant chain decides to take a hard line against anyone clowning around with the name Ronald McDonald.
Insights provided by the Critical Mention media monitoring service
