Mark Kalinowski's Take on Taco Bell Receipts

• TACO BELL TWEAKS McDONALD’S FOR PROMOTING… TACO BELL
  Following our April 13th industry note in which we noted that McDonald’s of Northeast Pennsylvania was offering a free Egg McMuffin for customers who provided – of all things – a breakfast receipt from rival Taco Bell, Katie Little of CNBC informed us that another group of McDonald’s restaurants is offering the same deal. This involves McDonald’s restaurants in the Coastal Bend of Texas. That group of McDonald’s restaurants tweeted out this past March 30th, “Bring us your Taco Bell receipt, and get yourself a free Egg McMuffin for Breakfast.” Sounds like that doesn’t even have to be a breakfast receipt!
• In addition, we’ve noticed several other McDonald’s Twitter accounts mentioning – directly or indirectly – Taco Bell, and/or Taco Bell’s “breakfast defector” marketing campaign. For example, McDonald’s Kansas City tweets “Defect if you’d like… Used to Egg McMuffins every morning? Defect to a McGriddle.” Another example comes from McDonald’s Tampa Bay: “At McDonald’s, we love everyone… even breakfast defectors.”
• Kalinowski’s take: The best response to all this comes from Taco Bell itself: “.@McDonald’s Why not make this offer available nationwide?” Yeah, we’d like it too if the 800-pound gorilla in our industry was promoting us – and in some cases, literally asking folks to go buy our product as part of a promotion. If we were McDonald's, we would mandate that all restaurants immediately cease these promotions of our smaller rival, no exceptions. And, to the extent Twitter etiquette permits this, and to the extent it wouldn’t break any laws, if we were McDonald’s we would even mandate that all McDonald’s restaurants’ past tweets mentioning (directly or indirectly) Taco Bell and/or Taco Bell’s “breakfast defector” promotion be immediately deleted.
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