Same for seeing billboards for various places across the country. I love Taco John's, Taco Time, and Del Taco, and wouldn't have found them without advertising.
The ads' "manufactured demand" improved my life in these instances. Same for various other products in other instances.
Did you go to eat at Taco Bell because of the ad? Would you have already, and perhaps seen it on their menu boards and tried it as a result?
Were you really not aware of these other taco places, and only became aware of them due to billboards? I know of 2/3 of them, I haven't heard of Taco Time (live in the midwest), but I've heard of the rest from people I know. I don't think I've seen any of them advertised here, but I could be wrong.
Yes, I don't go there usually. I might have eventually seen it but probably missed out on various short-lived items.
The other taco places I only get to go to on a road trip since I live on the east coast. I can't be sure how I found them at first but it was either conventional ads or those standardized freeway exit food signs, which certainly also count as an advertisement.
I guess I hadn't much considered the ability for something like a billboard to influence a traveler like that. A very good portion of their audience would see it day after day, but if you were just passing through the area, you wouldn't otherwise know some of the local options, interesting point.
I have completely dissociated all correlation of a filling meal/nourishment with this brand.
Again, to me, Taco Bell is a marketing company with a new product-of-the-month every month whose products just happen to be something that you chew and swallow.
Everything there gives me watery diarrhea. Granted, I couldn't get enough of the Volcano Tacos when they were a thing (unless the sauce had been sitting out for hours, at which point it was disgusting; it was very easy to tell by taste how fresh it was), but on the occasion that I walk by a T.V., there's often a silly, attention-grabbing commercial for Taco Bell.
Improving my life? At best, sure, when I was a kid/teenager/broke college student. Kind of like toy commercials, I reckon.
that's brand awarness, the product is the same.
When I go out eating I try different places, because some of them is surely better than the others.
The ads for "Quesarito" it's their product, if you didn't like it, you would be now thinking that you were fooled by the ads.
Exactly what taco bell did to you for all these years.
Can you only be fooled when you are alerted to the presence of a product without your consent?