Hasta La Creative!

The smiling face above is Mick Cornett, the Mayor of Oklahoma City, who has teamed with Taco Bell to challenge his city’s residents to lose 1 million pounds this year.

According to the AP:

Taco Bell’s new Fresco Menu, which debuted in December and includes nine items with less than nine grams of fat, has been dubbed the “Official Menu of the Mayor’s Challenge.” Life-size cardboard cutouts of the mayor, which began appearing Thursday in Oklahoma City-area Taco Bell stores, feature the slug, “Because you can’t lose 1 million lbs. by yourself.”

…

The idea for the campaign began shortly after officials with Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell learned of Cornett’s initiative and contacted the mayor, telling him about the new menu items being launched in their stores, including 42 in the Oklahoma City metro area.

From a marketing standpoint, it’s both genius and dangerous, and a natural fit for a fast food company with resources. You have a built-in focus group, the problem is they a) have free will and aren’t required to buy Taco Bell every day and b) they aren’t required to get items off the Fresco menu, which isn’t price equivalent even if it may or may not be taste equivalent, which seems to be the major problem concerning fast food and obesity.

Do people care that they’re eating a bean burrito with 6 grams of fat versus the kind with a regular tortilla and nacho cheese that may be “less healthy?” Do they realize that a Fresco taco doesn’t mean you should get a regular soda? Does this new campaign mean the employees of Taco Bell have an obligation to the people of OKC to keep them on a healthy regiment or to plug the healthy menu when an obese person orders the Nachos Bell Grande?

I’m more skeptical. When it comes down to it, on your way home from work, it matters more if you’re paying $2.29 for the healthy menu item or $.99 for the regular one from the value menu. If you want to really be effective, you either have to make the price comparable or get rid of the unhealthy items and replace them entirely, thus taking the choice factor out.

But let’s hope for the best and expect the worst. Maybe the advertising blitz in OKC will educate and change behavior, which is part of the point.

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