The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2022–2024
Taco Bell brings back Mexican Pizza by letting Doja Cat troll it for a year
Doja Cat played the antihero demanding Mexican Pizza's return — 'contractual' jingles, Coachella, 15B impressions.
Taco Bell · Deutsch LA
What it had to solve
After 35 years on the menu, Mexican Pizza left Taco Bell in 2020, and fans treated it as a betrayal — a 171,000-signature petition followed, with Doja Cat among the loudest voices demanding its return. Taco Bell's agency Deutsch LA saw the outcry as the campaign: instead of a normal relaunch ad, the brand would spar with its most famous fan for a whole year.
How it works
Taco Bell retired Mexican Pizza in 2020 after 35 years on the menu, and its cult following reacted as if the brand had cancelled a family member: a fan petition gathered 171,692 supporters, and Doja Cat campaigned for the item's return to her tens of millions of followers. Deutsch LA saw an opportunity that a normal relaunch could never match — a year-long story starring the brand's most famous critic.
The campaign inverted the celebrity endorsement. Doja Cat played the hero and Taco Bell the villain: fake Twitter beefs, diss tracks on TikTok, and an Instagram Live at midnight where she wrote a Mexican Pizza song in front of more than 10,000 viewers while repeatedly calling the partnership 'contractual'. She announced the actual return on stage at Coachella in May 2022, and when a fan turned her material into a musical, Taco Bell produced it for real with the fan, Doja Cat and Dolly Parton.
The payoff was commercial and cultural at once. Within two weeks of the relaunch, Mexican Pizza was selling at seven times its 2020 rate and sold out. The campaign produced 13,500 pieces of coverage, more than 15 billion earned media impressions, and over 77 million combined TikTok views for the musical alone. Doja Cat's sponsored single 'Celebrity Skin' — written with adapted Courtney Love lyrics and Travis Barker production — passed 22 million Spotify streams.
Why it lands
- Genuine fan outrage gave the story a beginning the brand could never have written itself.
- Making Doja Cat the antihero kept her authentic, so her audience trusted the 'beef' as real.
- The 'contractual' joke named the awkwardness of influencer deals and disarmed it with honesty.
- Every fan contribution — the petition, the stitch, the musical — was pulled into the official story instead of ignored.
What it did
Within two weeks of the May 2022 relaunch, Mexican Pizza sales ran seven times their 2020 level and sold out. The campaign logged 13,500 pieces of coverage, over 15 billion earned media impressions, and more than 77 million combined views for the musical on TikTok.
What you can take
When the audience already loves a product and one loud fan speaks for them, the honest move can be to join the joke — even when the joke is at your expense.
Since then
The campaign outlived the relaunch. 'Mexican Pizza: The Musical' kept generating TikTok views for months, and the work was recognized across shows: it became a 2023 Webby nominee for Best Partnership or Collaboration, and at the Clio Music Awards in early 2024 the Doja Cat partnership won a Grand for Creative Effectiveness. For Taco Bell, the bigger lesson was institutional: the brand said it would keep handing creative control to its fans, and immediately launched a vote asking customers which discontinued item should return next.
Sources
- The 2023 Webby Nominees for Best Partnerships and Collaborations
- How Taco Bell's social strategy made its Mexican Pizza a sell-out success
- That Time Doja Cat Helped Taco Bell Bring Back Its Mexican Pizza
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