This past spring, Deutsch L.A. launched the advertising breakfast wars with a campaign taking aim at McDonald’s while promoting Taco Bell’s breakfast offerings. The ads included a spot featuring real life Ronald McDonalds who prefer Taco Bell’s breakfast (an idea borrowed from a 2002 Jack in the Box campaign), the 80s-referencing “Get With The Times,” which called out McDonald’s for being out of touch, “Breakfast Defectors” and more. After backing off on the direction somewhat to promote other menu items, Deutsch L.A. seems to have brought the breakfast wars back in full force with a pair of new ads which launch today.
“Mourning Morning” asks viewers why we settle for less in the morning, taking on a “meh muffin” which is an obvious stand-in for McDonald’s Egg McMuffin and presenting Taco Bell’s Morning Crunchwrap as superior alternative complete with a crispy hashbrown inside. It’s a much more straightforward strategy than previous spots targeting McDonald’s breakfast, making an abundantly obvious comparison between the two chains’ breakfast options. “Clementine,” meanwhile, is told from the perspective of a piggy bank worried about the introduction of Taco Bell’s $1 Crunchwrap Sliders. Fortunately there’s a rubber plug on the bank for easy access.
“No matter what restaurant you look at, and you look at their egg muffin option, it always looks the same,” Stephanie Perdue, Taco Bell’s chief product marketing officer, told AdAge.” So Taco Bell, she added, is going after a younger audience “looking for something different than their father’s breakfast.”