When Taco Bell’s chief marketing officer Taylor Montgomery goes to work in the morning, he asks himself: “How do I unlock and unleash creativity in the organization?”
Montgomery says creativity comes from fearlessness and his role is to challenge himself to model this fearlessness for his team.
“It comes from not thinking about what could go wrong, but how do you get something to work? How do you make it as big as possible? If you can do that, and create a culture of fearlessness, that’s where you build amazing things.”
For Taco Bell, creativity is looking for ways to show up in the culture. For example, when the phrase “Taco Tuesday” became trademarked and independent restaurants could no longer use the term to promote their food, Taco Bell reached out to iconic athlete LeBron James in an effort to cancel the registered trademark.
When the brand brought back the 2000s Volcano Menu, the company partnered with Paris Hilton for a themed advice line. Fans could call 1-844-THTS-HOT to get Paris’ life advice and hear six pre-recorded messages that also promoted the Volcano Menu offers.
“We were looking for a twist on who loves the volcano taco that’s really relevant in youth culture,” recalls Montgomery. “Someone on the team proposed Paris Hilton. My first reaction, was, no way. She was relevant back in the day. We have a group of Gen Z social analysts and our head of socials said, ‘Paris is a queen for Gen Z, we got to do it.’ That was a big campaign for us. We just love Paris and she loves Taco Bell.”
Montgomery has been with Taco Bell for more than eight years and prior to that spent almost seven years at Procter & Gamble. He was recently named one of Brand Innovators 40 Under 40. Brand Innovators caught up with Montgomery from his office in Newport Beach, CA to talk about showing up in culture, inflation and Gen Z. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you just talk about Taco Bell showing up in culture?
It starts from a place of humility first, which is understanding what role your brand has been in culture and where you sit in the hearts and minds of consumers. And as a brand,what consumers are looking for you to do to help inspire them. That’s where it starts. And part of it a lot is listening. What is culture telling you they need from you as a brand? Where are they saying that you have the permission to play where maybe you didn’t think that you did. And then when you see those opportunities, we move and culture moves with us.
With LeBron, and started with, Live mas were two words that are really important to the brand. It’s an English word and a Spanish word together. It’s about action. It’s about a lifestyle. It’s about a philosophy, some of that courage and fearlessness and rebel spirit is wrapped up into that. If we’re going to try to imbue Live mas with new meanings, well, how do we do that? It’s not about doing a film about it. It was about an action. That’s where the idea for Taco Tuesday came from.
What is something in that culture that we can do to help culture in general? If there’s a pocket of restaurants out there in the world that makes and celebrates tacos like us, and they can’t use Taco Tuesday to get more people to have more tacos. Why don’t we do that? And then that’s where the idea comes from, which is, well, who can help us do that? Who shares a similar cultural point of view? That’s where the Lebron idea came from. LeBron is Taco Tuesdays’ biggest fan. And so it’s him as Taco Tuesdays’ biggest fan, not as one of the biggest athletes in the world.
How are you thinking about Gen Z?
Everybody is chasing Gen Z. For us it starts with who’s our muse and who we talk about as our muse as a brand is the cultural level. And the culture rebel is inspired by Gen Z doesn’t necessarily have to be Gen Z. A brand is the cultural rebel people that shape culture are fearless and are bold. For us to connect with Gen Z and reach them, we have to walk the walk first. Our No. 1 thing is embracing our authentic Mexican-inspired roots.
That’s why we launched our Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco, which is our version of birria. We’re going to do more of those types of things and not shy away from the fact that we’re Mexican-inspired. But that authenticity inspired by our muse – the cultural rebel– is what we are seeing resonating with that generation, because they don’t want you to pander to them or talk down to them or mirror trends. What they want from brands is authenticity and realness.
How are you thinking about innovation?
The biggest opportunity that we have as a brand is actually getting more people to fall in love with us. We have a really passionate cult that loves Taco Bell and comes to us a lot. But we have a big opportunity to make Taco Bell more relevant in consumers’ lives for more occasions every day. As we think about new occasions, you’re going to see us testing some things around new occasions. We launched breakfast about five or six years ago. We have two big platforms that are launching next year that are more everyday platforms. We’re testing chillers, which is our version of frozen shakes and coffees. We tested nuggets this year. So that’s what you’re going to see from us from a menu innovation standpoint is how do we be more relevant in consumers’ lives more often, but not lose that Taco Bell twist.
In terms of restaurant innovation, it’s about ease for consumers. That’s what they want more than anything else. How do you make the experience top notch, which means I feel great when I come to Taco Bell. It needs to be easy. So you’re going to see us pushing a lot of concepts like Go Mobile, figuring out ways to innovate to make things like delivery and carry out easier, connecting loyalty to more pieces of our experience.
What are you doing to help consumers navigate inflation?
We have to be who we are and what they expect from us. No. 1, we are the most craveable innovative brand in the world. When consumers are strapped, the bar for experiences and innovation is higher and we have to meet that bar and exceed that bar. We have to continue to be the innovative brand at the bar. The second thing is value. We are the value leaders in the category.
If we can do both of those things, give consumers amazing innovation at prices that everybody can afford that makes your head turn and go, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I can get something like that from Taco Bell. That’s how we show up for consumers.
Can you talk about how your background at companies such as P&G helped prepare you for this role?
There’s three things from my time at P&G that helped me for this role. The No. 1 most important thing is the concept of leadership as your job. P&G does a really good job at teaching you leadership as a discipline, and how it’s a craft that you have to continue to hone and shape. And that’s about inspiring people, connecting people, leading with a clear vision. The thing is the concept of radical accountability. Something magical happens to you when you and your team are really accountable for the culture, the brand, the business. It teaches you resiliency and innovation and a mindset of winning. Then the third thing is how to use marketing as a brand building tool to drive a business.
Are there any key trends that you’re looking at for marketing?
The thing that I’m seeing more than anything is consumers are out and ready to engage with brands, but their threshold and their quality of expectations is higher than it’s ever been higher than it’s ever been. What that means for brands is you have to be really distinctive and you can’t fake it. You have to be more real, more authentic than any other brand out there if you want consumers to engage with you over something else. The quality and caliber for experiences and innovations is at an all time high.
