Fast Company — #1 Ad of 2023

“Taco Tuesday” was trademarked, so we teamed up with LeBron James to free it.

A large Midwestern taco chain owned the “Taco Tuesday” trademark. Worse, they harassed small taco stores by sending them '“cease and desist” letters whenever they used the phrase. We thought that was messed up, so we filed a legal petition against the trademark.

With the oversight of Taco Bell’s lawyers, I wrote the legal petition document that we submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the trademark. (I think that makes me a lawyer technically if you happen to need those services.)

LeBron James and his family LOVE Taco Tuesday. And luckily, he said yes to teaming up with us to free “Taco T***day.” Here’s our TV spot, directed by the very talented Rodrigo Valdes who was a dream to work with.

Next, we created a petition on change.org, so fans could get behind the cause. And then on Instagram, the tables turned when it was LeBron asking fans for their autograph.

We didn’t know if we’d be able to free the trademark. And if we did, Taco Bell lawyers said it could take a year or two. But if impossible takes Jay-Z a week, it took us just 3 months. We won and the “Taco Tuesday” trademark was free!

It was great for Taco Bell, obviously, with all the earned media and news coverage that the campaign produced: more than 21 billion earned media impressions and more than 11,000 pieces of media coverage, and our audience engagement in one week surpassed the entirety of the hugely popular relaunch of the Mexican Pizza from the year before.

Plus, it was also cool to see posts like this one from a small taco business owner.

And here’s the case study video we made for the campaign. Say it with us, “Taco Tuuuesdayyy!”