Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 9, 1995 TAG: 9502100074
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLIOT BLAIR SMITH ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Taco Bell Corp. on Wednesday introduced the ``Border Lights'' menu and advertising campaign that executives of the Irvine, Calif.-based company say ``will change the fast-food industry forever.''
From a 64th-floor suite at Rockefeller Center with a panoramic view of Manhattan, Taco Bell Chief Executive John Martin promoted an eight-item menu of health-conscious fare that features the likes of baked white-corn tacos stuffed with lean beef and low-fat cheese and sour cream.
Martin said the new line of low-fat food is expected to add $5 billion a year by the end of the decade to the company's sales, which currently are $4.5 billion a year.
"Fast food meals are a daily reality for nearly 46 million Americans living the fast-paced '90s lifestyle," Hope Warshaw, a dietitian and author of ``The Restaurant Companion: A Guide To Healthier Eating Out,'' said at Taco Bell's announcement. People desire healthier alternatives but are unwilling to sacrifice taste, price and convenience, she said.
Yet the ``Border Lights'' imagery already is meeting resistance at the U.S.-Mexico border, where the debate over illegal immigration has hardened in recent months, and the U.S. Border Patrol has reinforced perimeter defenses with additional agents and high-tech equipment that includes infrared scopes, sensors, stadium lights and helicopter patrols.
``It's hard for me to make a connection between low-calorie food and `border lights,''' said Roberto Martinez, director of the Quaker-funded U.S.-Mexico Border Project and an immigrant-rights advocate.
``My God, what does that have to do with the sale of tacos?'' chimed in Muriel Watson, head of a citizens group opposed to illegal immigration.
Watson, the widow of a former Border Patrol agent, served as a lightning rod for anti-illegal-immigration sentiment in the early 1990s that grew into the statewide movement behind California's Proposition 187, which would restrict illegal immigrants' social and welfare benefits.
Under the banner ``Light Up the Border,'' Watson led caravans of up to 600 automobiles that shined their headlights across the dark divide, ostensibly to illuminate the passage of undocumented immigrants. The U.S. Border Patrol reports apprehending 1.03 million illegal immigrants in 1994, including 450,152 in the San Diego region, an hour's drive from Taco Bell's Irvine headquarters.
``I think `Light Up the Border' brought attention to the border in a way that had never been demonstrated before,'' Watson said. ``There has never been such a visual and vocal support for the mission of the Border Patrol.''
Watson also clashed with Taco Bell over its advertising campaign at the time, ``Run For the Border,'' which she said conjured images of illicit immigration, drug smuggling and gun running.
Hispanic magazine termed ``Run for the Border'' the worst sales pitch of 1991. Critics from comedians to migrant advocates deemed the theme insensitive.
``I wrote to them and said, `Knock that off,''' recalled Watson, who said she employed Light Up the Border stationery that depicts on its masthead the headlights of a Border Patrol vehicle penetrating inky darkness.
Imagine Watson's surprise, then, when she - like an estimated 75 million Super Bowl viewers Jan. 29 - watched the initial Taco Bell advertisement that cryptically introduced ``Border Lights.'' No reference to a low-fat menu was made. Full rollout of the new campaign doesn't begin until March, although the company said some items will be available on Feb. 20.
``I sat there and watched that thing, and I nearly fainted dead away,'' Watson said. ``The phones started ringing off the hook.''
Taco Bell Vice President Jonathan Blum rejects inferences that ``Border Lights'' might be linked to - or confused with - Light Up the Border or Border Patrol activity in the region.
``This has nothing to do with that. We've been using `border' as our theme for many, many years,'' Blum said. ``The cross-border theme is a state of mind, not a geographic location. It's about an adventurous journey, not a location.''
Dolores Valdes, owner of the Century City, Calif., advertising firm that creates Taco Bell's Spanish-language advertisements, added, ``Border lights is just the name of a product. [It] is just something new and exciting from the border.''
Blum said he is unfamiliar with Watson's group and unaware of her correspondence to Taco Bell. He declined to discuss the genesis of the ``Border Lights'' marketing campaign.
Representatives of Taco Bell's two advertising firms - Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Bozell/Salvati Montgomery Sakoda and Dallas-based Richards Group - which split $150 million in annual billings and helped create the campaign, also declined to comment. Other marketing professionals offered split assessments of the border motif, which author Luis Alberto Urrea, in his book ``Across the Wire,'' depicted as a harsh proving ground replete with ``monstrous Dodge trucks speeding into and out of the landscape; uniformed men patrolling with flashlights, guns, and dogs; spotlights; running figures; lines of people hurried onto buses by armed guards; and the endless clatter of the helicopters with their harsh white beams.''
Richard Zien, a principal of Los Angeles-based Mendelsohn/Zien advertising agency, averred, ``If you said `border lights' and didn't say Taco Bell, people would have a tough time with that. [But] Taco Bell is a national company. California and Texas are a small part of the population base they are trying to appeal to.''
Zien praised Taco Bell's shift to a health-conscious menu as opportunistic and said ``they're going to create an image'' underlying the new campaign. ``They will work on communicating what that means.''
Dan Nance, executive vice president of San Antonio-based Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar, Noble & Associates - the nation's largest Hispanic advertising agency - offered a tougher assessment.
``Border lights could represent promise, new life and opportunity. Or fences, lights and exclusions,'' Nance said. ``I think the illegal-immigration problem in the United States is very well-known and hotly disputed in all areas of the country. It's difficult to divorce yourself from that issue.''
by CNB