Taco Bell is clear­ly a brand that knows its audi­ence and is able to con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er con­tent its tar­get wants and eager­ly con­sumes. So what’s Taco Bell’s secret? And what can mar­keters learn from Taco Bel­l’s social media strat­e­gy?

Tressie Lieber­man, senior direc­tor of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing plat­forms and social engage­ment at Taco Bell, and Win­ston Binch, part­ner and chief dig­i­tal offi­cer at the brand’s agency Deutsch North Amer­i­ca, spoke recent­ly at Ad Age’s dig­i­tal con­fer­ence and shared some insight.

Even though there’s a lot to keep up with and she jokes there will “prob­a­bly be a few new social plat­forms that launch while we’re here,” Lieber­man said, “I don’t think there could be a bet­ter time to be a mar­keter.”

That’s because mar­keters can now have direct con­ver­sa­tions with con­sumers.

“Instead of sit­ting behind glass and lis­ten­ing to a focus group, we now have access to 20 mil­lion con­sumers and can be inspired by them and con­nect with them and have real rela­tion­ships with them,” she said.

But the bar is also a lot high­er.

“No one cares what you have to say,” Binch said. “Atten­tion is scarce and [com­pe­ti­tion] is sky-high and out­side of live tele­vised events, ads are eas­i­er to skip. Lives are increas­ing­ly on demand and we have to deal with it.”

That means brands have to invent orig­i­nal and share­able ideas.

“We’re com­pet­ing with cul­ture itself: Cats, Left Sharks and Buz­zFeeds, etc.,” Binch said. “Any­one who has idea can put it out there. That’s what we’re work­ing against and with.”

So what can brands do to win?

Social Media Dominance the Taco Bell Way

1. Act Like A Fan, Not A Corporation

“Stop being a mar­keter,” Lieber­man said. “We threw out the 5 Ps and start­ed going back to the basics. Just be your­self. That’s some­thing you hear through­out your life. It shouldn’t be dif­fer­ent for a brand.”

Like a per­son on a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery, per­haps, Lieber­man sad that has meant the Taco Bell brand itself has had to do a lot of work to under­stand who it actu­al­ly is as well. In oth­er words, she said the brand wants to be gen­uine on social media as opposed to attempt­ing to cre­ate a social per­sona.

Case in point: Lieber­man says the brand used to take pro­fes­sion­al shots of food that had been painstak­ing­ly arranged just so, but the brand has since piv­ot­ed to look­ing at its food instead from the consumer’s point of view.

“Things have def­i­nite­ly changed,” Lieber­man says. “We want food to look as if [con­sumers] were tak­ing pho­tos them­selves.”

And, Binch notes, Taco Bell saw con­ver­sion num­bers jump when it start­ed using real pic­tures.

“Being a lifestyle brand, it’s not just about food and pho­tos. It’s ‘do unto oth­ers as you would do unto you.’” Lieber­man said. “We’re cre­at­ing con­tent now that’s endem­ic to the plat­form and think­ing about things they want to talk about.”

2. Hire Internet Kids, Turn Them Loose

Anoth­er pop­u­lar theme at the Ad Age event was mak­ing sure brands with young employ­ees that are dig­i­tal natives are actu­al­ly tap­ping into that tal­ent and giv­ing them the tools nec­es­sary to suc­ceed. And Taco Bell is no dif­fer­ent.

“When I vis­it­ed Taco Bell, there’s a bunch of kids in a fish­bowl ana­lyz­ing data,” Binch said. “Let them loose and let them make mis­takes, but be in the wings to push inno­va­tion.”

Part of Taco Bell’s tremen­dous dig­i­tal suc­cess to date has been because it has tapped into its young inter­nal cre­ators who know the brand and can help oth­ers with­in the orga­ni­za­tion remain con­nect­ed to their peers via inter­nal efforts like the Mil­len­ni­al Word of the Week.

In addi­tion, Lieber­man said Taco Bell was the first brand on Snapchat with a Valentine’s Day effort that result­ed in pho­tos from more than 100,000 fans, cit­ing “major pas­sion that came from peo­ple who know the plat­form and are able to inno­vate.”

3. Adopt An Explorer Mentality

Per Lieber­man, brands have to learn by doing and “being pro­lif­ic and not pre­cious.”

This doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly require a lot of cap­i­tal expen­di­ture either – it’s more about try­ing out plat­forms the way fans would, such as Taco Bell’s first Snapchat film, which she said helped the brand dou­ble its Snapchat fol­low­ers to about 120,000.

This effort, she said, goes back to act­ing human on a social plat­form and pro­vid­ing con­tent “in the same way you look for con­tent from friends.”

YouTu­ber Tyler Oak­ley, for exam­ple, is what Lieber­man calls “a friend of the brand” and a fan who “just loves Taco Bell,” so the brand “con­tin­ues to stay in a rela­tion­ship with him,” which some­times means just tweet­ing back and forth.

“We made him some art for his birth­day,” Lieber­man said. “We want­ed to make it per­son­al. It’s not about one-size-fits-all. It’s a per­son­al rela­tion­ship.”

4. Make The Product The Message

Brands have to instill a social mind­set into the orga­ni­za­tion, Lieber­man said.

“The job of the social team is much eas­i­er when they have some­thing to talk about. You can real­ly break through with a lit­tle bud­get,” she added.

She points to an image of a Taco Bell cere­al hybrid, Cap’n Crunch Delights, which was tak­en by in-house cre­ator and post­ed on Insta­gram, but trend­ed on Twit­ter “with­in a minute…because the prod­uct has social cur­ren­cy built in.”

Found this in the test kitchen. #Cap­n­CrunchDe­lights pic.twitter.com/9CJJ9UHXNs

— Taco Bell (@tacobell) Feb­ru­ary 27, 2015

5. If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead

In oth­er words, Lieber­man said, “The more com­pli­cat­ed it gets, the hard­er it is to talk about, so keep it sim­ple.”

Look at the exam­ple of the Taco Bell mobile order­ing app, which solved a con­sumer need by pro­vid­ing a per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ence and allow­ing cus­tomers to feel like VIPs when­ev­er they go to Taco Bell because they can skip the line and are called by name.

“When we designed it, we want­ed it to be social first,” Lieber­man said. “It’s about show­ing food as you enjoy it in a restau­rant and that made all the dif­fer­ence.”

In addi­tion, at launch, Lieber­man said the brand tapped the pow­er of pas­sion­ate con­sumers and did a black­out across its social chan­nels, which got fans talk­ing and moved the app from a rank­ing of 1,300 to 22 in the App Store in 11 hours.

“It’s about doing it in the right way to pro­vide val­ue,” she said.

6. It’s About Brand Lovers, Not Influencers

Accord­ing to Binch, “Too often…influencers are peo­ple who are inter­est­ed and have fan bases, but aren’t con­nect­ed in any mean­ing­ful way, which is bad adver­tis­ing.”

He points to the brand’s recent Break­fast Defec­tors cam­paign that sent out kits to fans, who, in turn “shared them like crazy.”

“The work we do works because it con­nects with the fan. It’s built to the audi­ence,” Lieber­man said. “The biggest piece of advice I would give is it comes back to being human and being true to your­self. Start with the brand and lean in and be authen­tic to who you are.”

7. Avoid Real-Time Desperation

Sound­ing some­thing like a guid­ance coun­selor, Binch cau­tions brands not to try too hard to fit in.

“Be cool, be calm, be your­self. Be who you as a brand are in the world. Taco Bell has a unique posi­tion in the world. It effects every­thing, every chan­nel, every piece of work,” he said. “Don’t chase The Dress. You don’t need to.”

Instead, Binch said, find sub­ject mat­ter that mat­ters to brand, and start and spread those con­ver­sa­tions.

“Real-time mar­ket­ing dri­ves me bananas,” Lieber­man said. “Why do you have some­thing to say on that sub­ject?”

Although, she con­cedes, real-time forces brands to be nim­ble, lean and ready to respond and brands do need to be lis­ten­ing and to jump on things when they hap­pen some­times. She uses the exam­ple of a hoax in the town of Bethel, Alas­ka and a rumor that Taco Bell was com­ing.

“They were so excit­ed and freaked out and it end­ed up being a rumor and this end­ed up being nation­al news cov­er­age,” she said.

So, she said, Taco Bell decid­ed to make it right by show­ing up “in a unique­ly Taco Bell way” by hir­ing a heli­copter to pull a taco truck into town and then the brand turned that footage and live con­tent into anoth­er cam­paign.

Accord­ing to Binch, this also gets back to the point about turn­ing smart young peo­ple loose and also high­lights the need for speed on social as just 18 days passed between the Twit­ter rumors and the truck’s arrival.

“What I love about this is this turned into some­thing much big­ger for the Taco Bell brand,” Lieber­man said. “We built a rela­tion­ship with the town of Bethel.”

She also uses the exam­ple of the taco emo­ji and the brand’s Change.org peti­tion that has more than 30,000 sig­na­tures. Despite anoth­er recent update to emo­jis, there is still no taco, so Lieber­man said the brand will con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on the cause in part because it has helped earn more than 350 mil­lion media impres­sions.

“It’s about mutu­al respect, hon­esty and talk­ing things out and ask­ing, ‘Is it right for the con­sumer? Why would they share it? What does Taco Bell have to do with it? How do you make it feel almost like anti-adver­tis­ing?’” Lieber­man said.

8. Focus On Relentless Customer-Centricity

At the end of the day, Lieber­man said, “Being focused on the con­sumer is what it’s all about,” and the brand has “a lot of deep love for the cus­tomer.”

Fur­ther, an obses­sion with cus­tomers means brands don’t even need fan­cy ana­lyt­ics tools, but can instead sim­ply search for hash­tags on social plat­forms to “real­ly get to know cus­tomers,” she added. “We’re focused on them. It all goes back to why we’re here.”

Does your social media strat­e­gy include fea­tur­ing orig­i­nal and share­able ideas?