Taco Bell, Operation: Alaska

For the last week or so there have been several advertisements for Taco Bell, purportedly documenting that company’s humanitarian effort, dubbed “Operation Alaska,” to bring tacos to the small western town of Bethel, Alaska:

The only fast food the remote village of Bethel enjoys is a Subway sandwich franchise. But a month or so ago, rumors began to circulate around town of a Taco Bell opening soon. A few days later, fliers began showing up touting the new Taco Bell. Townspeople began to get giddy in anticipation. But as reported in media throughout the country (or world), the rumor and fliers were all an apparent hoax. There was no Taco Bell coming to Bethel. But in what is described in the media as a PR coup, the executives at Taco Bell decided to ship in by helicopter a truck filled with 950 pounds of beef, 500 pounds of sour cream, 300 pounds of tomatoes, 300 pounds of lettuce, and 150 pounds of cheddar cheese, in order to make 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos, gratis, for the hungry residents of tiny, fast-food starved Bethel. Coincidentally, the taco mission just happened at the same time that Taco Bell was launching its new Cantina Bell menu. And the Bethel commercials are at the heart of the new campaign.

Call me a cynic (I am, and proud of it, if only because I’m almost always right), but I find it odd that in such a small, remote town as Bethel, that the kind of rumor and flier effort that went on about Taco Bell could remain a mystery, or “an evil hoax” as the Anchorage Daily News called it. I find it much more plausible that the rumors and fliers were in fact the first wave of an ingenious advertising campaign on the part of Taco Bell that led to the company’s “show of good will” of flying in free tacos for the whole town, followed by a series of commercials championing the noble generosity of the company and their new Cantina Bell menu. And the media aren’t about to follow up on this possibility because Taco Bell (and its parent company) is a big advertiser in their papers and on their radio and TV stations. Best just to turn the advertising stunt into news stories and let everybody have a feel-good moment about the fast-food chain. As I said, I’m a cynic. But I’m also almost always right.