The brand that wants us to Live Más now wants us to live old.
A Taco Bell marketing event is inviting young millennials and zoomers to cosplay as retirees at The Cantinas, an early retirement community somewhere in the San Diego area. (The exact location is being kept under wraps — Crunch Wraps, presumably — until closer to the kick-off party on Aug. 17.)
At The Cantinas, passholders can channel their inner senior citizen and engage in all kinds of leisurely pursuits: bocce ball, golf, croquet and, of course, pickle ball between bites of Cheesy Gordita Crunches. Sounds like a Baja Blast!
No, the Cantinas isn’t an actual 55+ community (it’s presumably being hosted at a luxury resort). It’s a temporary branded experience and a big marketing gimmick for the fast-food chain’s Cantina Chicken Menu.
Pop-up experiences like these are becoming more common as brands try to drive deeper engagement with fans (and dive deeper into their wallets). Netflix, for example, is turning vacant mall spaces into immersive set pieces where fans can interact with ephemera from the streamer’s most popular shows, and luxury brands are giving the struggling retail sector a pulse with temporary stores that combine merchandise and virtual experiences.
It’s easy to dismiss these events for what they are — marketing stunts — but they could help reacquaint people with more time-honored ways of living, shopping and working before the pandemic and technology radically reshaped all that. Surely, Netflix bringing people back to malls is a welcome development. Could Taco Bell’s concept spark an interest in living in an active-adult community? Maybe! Unfortunately, this effort is aimed at young people whose retirements are on the distant horizon.
It’s boomers who need a taste of Taco Bell’s retirement community life.
According to Seniorly, boomers resist the idea of moving to senior living communities. Despite the appeal of amenities, services and a low maintenance homeplace, about 60% of boomers indicate they would rather not move to a senior living community within the next five years, even if cost were not a factor. As a result, this generation is not only staying in their homes longer but also buying additional properties, reducing the number of available houses on the market and driving up prices. This makes homeownership out of reach for the zoomers snarfing tacos at The Cantinas. What we need are immersive branded experiences that show older Americans that living in a 55+ community can be pretty sweet.
While we’re at it, there’s another struggling real estate sector brands can help resuscitate — office space. With vacancies plaguing commercial office buildings, thanks to remote work, maybe brands can give people reasons to come back to our once-busy business districts. A luxury office furniture brand could host office parties to reintroduce us to the way we used to work. (Imagine all the selfies by the watercooler.) Or Peacock could follow Netflix’s lead and offer the Dunder Mifflin Experience.
After all, there’s an Office reboot in the works.
