Taco Bell’s much-talked-about new app and pro­mo­tion strat­e­gy has gar­nered quite a bit of atten­tion for a brand that seems to have an uncan­ny knack for con­nect­ing with mil­len­ni­als. And it cer­tain­ly isn’t con­tent to rest on its lau­rels. Call­ing its new app, “the biggest dis­rup­tion to the entire indus­try since the dri­ve-thru,” the brand shares some lessons derived from its expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing and launch­ing the app.

Taco Bell says it is the first quick ser­vice chain to launch a mobile order­ing and pay­ment app for dri­ve-thru and din­ing room orders and, in typ­i­cal Taco Bell fash­ion, it has man­aged to do so in the coolest way pos­si­ble, caus­ing a sen­sa­tion through­out media and social.

Taco Bell says the new app, which is avail­able in the App Store and on Google Play, has fea­tures that go beyond mobile order­ing to “bring a new Taco Bell expe­ri­ence to fans.”

That’s in part because for the first time, con­sumers can view and select from every avail­able ingre­di­ent to cus­tomize an order like nev­er before, which yields “mil­lions of menu options,” Taco Bell says.

Cus­tomers can also pay secure­ly and pick up orders through dri­ve-thrus or sep­a­rate lines with­in the stores.

“Con­sumers demand a deep­er rela­tion­ship and a more con­nect­ed rela­tion­ship and they are always on,” said Jeff Jenk­ins, direc­tor of dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence and new con­cepts at Taco Bell. “They want the abil­i­ty to access brands when­ev­er they want. With mobile, we saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect, espe­cial­ly to our pas­sion­ate fan base that wants to take it to the next lev­el, which we are able to pro­vide through mobile.”

So, after work­ing on this app for two years, what lessons can mar­keters glean from Taco Bell?

Lesson 1: Offer Cool Features

Taco Bell says it is the first busi­ness to offer a patent-pend­ing fea­ture called “Rotate to Reorder,” which “makes reorder­ing cus­tomized favorites as easy as a flick of the wrist.”

Per Jenk­ins, anoth­er inter­est­ing fea­ture is the abil­i­ty to send e‑gifts via the app.

“I think in a lot of ways, we’re cre­at­ing our own cur­ren­cy for Taco Bell con­sumers to exchange,” he said.

The result is a “sim­ple, ele­gant solu­tion” that allows cus­tomers to eas­i­ly send mon­ey to friends via email or text.

“We put a lot of time and effort to make sure it was not a clunky expe­ri­ence,” Jenk­ins said. “It opens a link and you click and add mon­ey. It’s a very grace­ful expe­ri­ence.”

These fea­tures are also high­light­ed in a mobile demo video.

Lesson 2: Be Unique

Jenk­ins said the brand “didn’t want to use the tool every­one else is using and have it look like an off-the-shelf solu­tion that we slapped our logo on.”

Instead, the brand strives for a mobile expe­ri­ence that is “unique­ly Taco Bell and a ful­ly cus­tomized solu­tion.”

And Jenk­ins said the result is an app that looks and feels like Taco Bell and has been well-received by fans. After launch­ing on Octo­ber 28, it has thou­sands of reviews with an aver­age of 4+ out of 5 stars and was in the Top 20 apps in the App Store in the first 24 hours, Jenk­ins said.

Fans have also cap­tured them­selves using the app in real life and Jenk­ins said “it’s fun to watch how they’ve been blown away with a new way to inter­act with the brand.”

Lesson 3: Make It Beautiful

Jenk­ins said it all starts with design, par­tic­u­lar­ly the user inter­face, which includes large, attrac­tive images.

“Food nat­u­ral­ly is eat­ing with the eyes,” Jenk­ins said. “We’ve seen that with cam­era phones – you whip out your cam­era at a nice place and share an image [of what you’re eat­ing]. We want­ed to con­nect the dots between that behav­ior and our order­ing app. You see images on the menu as if they were tak­en by con­sumers sit­ting next to you.”

In fact, Jenk­ins said, “tons of peo­ple” are post­ing images of the app itself on Insta­gram.

Lesson 4: Listen

Accord­ing to Jenk­ins, the key to con­nect­ing to well with con­sumers is lis­ten­ing.

He said the brand’s social, dig­i­tal and PR teams hud­dle togeth­er each day to make sure they under­stand not only what’s going on in Taco Bell’s uni­verse, but also the larg­er pop cul­ture land­scape, includ­ing trends, as they attempt to get a grasp on what res­onates with Taco Bell con­sumers.

“Just because it’s trend­ing, doesn’t mean it’s rel­e­vant to our con­sumers,” Jenk­ins said. “How do we reflect cul­ture, shape cul­ture, stems from lis­ten­ing.”

In addi­tion, Jenk­ins said the brand has younger team mem­bers who help keep old­er exec­u­tives rel­e­vant by send­ing out Mil­len­ni­al words of the week so all employ­ees can keep up with slang and how to use it.

Lesson 5: Consumers Don’t Always Know Exactly What They Want

“We’re lis­ten­ing to where the prob­lems are and cre­at­ing solu­tions that [con­sumers] couldn’t have even imag­ined,” Jenk­ins said. “Things like menu board anx­i­ety and feel­ing rushed in the line or not know­ing all of the options because there’s finite space on menu boards and we can’t list every ingre­di­ent.”

The result: the brand cre­at­ed a mobile expe­ri­ence that deals with these issues and includes cus­tomiz­able menu items and the abil­i­ty to browse the menu at a more leisure­ly pace and pick up orders when­ev­er the cus­tomer is ready.

Lesson 6: Never Stop Surprising Customers

Even Taco Bell’s social pro­mo­tion of the app, which is real­ly more like no pro­mo­tion, has equal­ly caused a sen­sa­tion.

Taco Bell’s social media black­out, in which its Twit­ter, Face­book, Tum­blr and Insta­gram pages went “dark,” was done to show­case “the new way to Taco Bell is #onlyintheapp,” the brand says.

“While silent, each social media plat­form, as well as tacobell.com, will pro­vide only a dis­rup­tive mes­sage and link to down­load the new app — with all pre­vi­ous con­tent removed,” the brand said in a release.

Jenk­ins said the brand has pre­vi­ous­ly done some “amaz­ing social cam­paigns” and has had “amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions,” but, this time, thought, “What if in cre­at­ing a new con­ver­sa­tion, there was no con­ver­sa­tion? What if we focused all of our atten­tion on the app?”

This is in part because “we believe inter­nal­ly [that this app] is the biggest dis­rup­tion to the entire indus­try since the dri­ve-thru,” Jenk­ins said. As a result, for the launch, every oth­er chan­nel directs back to the app. When asked if the brand has plans to bring back its tweets, Face­book con­tent and the like or if it is gone for­ev­er, Jenk­ins said, “We can’t stay away from it long. Stay tuned…We try to nev­er stop sur­pris­ing cus­tomers. In mobile and social, it’s always sur­prise and delight to keep them inter­est­ed and make sure we’re con­nect­ing.”

Taco Bell says its new app rein­forces its “com­mit­ment to be even bet­ter and more rel­e­vant for cus­tomers, oper­a­tors and Team Mem­bers” and “sup­ports the brand’s com­mit­ment to reach its goal to dou­ble rev­enue to $14 bil­lion and add 2,000 loca­tions over the next eight years by pro­vid­ing cus­tomers anoth­er way to access Taco Bell.”

Taco Bell is a sub­sidiary of Yum! Brands Inc.