Taco Bell and E. coli O157:H7
December 19th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Grayhat SEO, SEMIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Since I live on Long Island in New York where some of the Taco Bell E.Coli 0157:h7 food poisoning incidents have occurred the story has been fairly front of mind for me. However I though it might be interesting to share the SERP with some of you from other spots who don’t get some of the geo-targeted advertising.
Here’s a current shot of the SERP’s from New York on 12/19/2006
Firstly kudos to TacoBell.com for buying adwords. Even better to put up a section in the latest news area of their website with a letter and video from the president of the company addressing the issue. They get a big fat F for trapping it behind a flash application making it impossible for me to link to it (see Why Advertisers Love Flash and Ajax, and Why it’s Really Stupid). They also get an F for not uploading it to You Tube. However an A+ for creativity for the people video spamming YouTube for Taco Bell
with fake Britney Spears videos however they get an F for execution and overall content.
Looking at the other advertisers I think that YourLawyer.com did a much better job of constructing an ad than MarlerClark.com did (nice use of dynamic text guys). What’s also interesting is nobody has jumped on the [Olive Garden] who had a norovirus food poisoning incident (see Norovirus suspected in Olive Garden illnesses | Chicago Tribune).
Lastly lets look at the technorati serps for [taco bell] since Taco Bell doesn’t have a blog they have no way to interject or interact with the message that’s being put out there. Remember the time to prepare for a crisis in reputation management isn’t when you are in the middle of it, it’s before hand when you can act in a rational methodical well planned and thought out manner.
Sphere It
December 19th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
I was surprised not to see any Chiles, Burger King or McDonald’s ads:
E-Coli Free Food
Eat here & don’t get sick
I’m loving it
December 19th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Wow, the title for tacobell.com is tacobell.com. You know, I would think that they would have gone with something along the lines of “Taco Bell - Think Outside The Bun”. Talk about horrible. Way to go Taco Bell!
December 19th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
I find it interesting that specificity of ads in this case is probably hurting the more specific ad’s clickthrough rate.
For instance, if I got e coli, and I recently ate at taco bell, I’m probably not going to respond very well to a long string of numbers and characters, even if I saw it on the news.
What I will respond to is the action I want to take, in this case “Taco Bell Lawsuit”
December 19th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Well, it may not be on YouTube, but they did run a commercial with a message from the President during the football game the other night.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
I saw those commercials Jason - he sure moves his hands A LOT.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Yeah cool, let them blog about tacos! =P
I
December 19th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
It’s an excellent point you make about being prepared. It’s like an insurance policy.
A good question to ask a potential client in these situations might be: “What is the ROI of owning a good fire extinguisher?”.
This scenario is called a “Calculated Risk Assessment”. Most people want hard numbers to justify reputation management expenses. However, precision is not the primary goal in these situations. The goal is to agree upon the basic principal or the idea on which you make your business decisions regarding the mitigation of risk.
Major companies do this all the time to justify the cost of insurgence. The risk of theft, fires and natural disasters are assessed all the time & smart companies make the appropriate investments.
There are no guarantees with any kind of risk management. Just like purchasing a good fire extinguisher… The incident may never occur & the risk is not eliminated, only mitigated.
Unless there is an actual incident like with Taco Bell… You can’t get from the cost of an imaginary incident to an ROI projection but you can focus on the probability of some kind of a reputation management incident occurring over a period of time. (100%)
Subtract the cost of the fire extinguisher from the expected cost of a fire. Even if you divide this by the probability, you should still come to the conclusion that purchasing a fire extinguisher is a good idea.
BTW - I get the exact same search results out here in Hawaii as you do. Strange how “Taco Bell Hawaii” made it onto the front page. California Taco Bells probably outnumber us 1000 to 1.
December 19th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Hey Mike…
I’d love to see you comment about the “You Tube” algorithm. I uploaded my first videos to You Tube recently and, despite no attempt at doing anything remotely resembling SEO, rank #2 and #3 for my son’s name out of 642 with a brand new account. No such luck with my daughter’s name…
December 20th, 2006 at 1:48 am
I’m in California (SF Bay Area) and have the exact same sponsored results, and the same top ten results for the search on Taco Bell.
I do have a “News results for taco bell” from eight hours ago which lists “Taco John’s Aims to Blunt E. Coli Damage”. Looks like there was an outbreak in the Taco John restaurants in Minnesota and Iowa.
No sponsored results for taco coli — some law firm could make money with a cheap CPC and covering two restaurants for the same term with that one.