The fast food category is as fierce as the gaming industry, with lots of brands doing anything in their power to try to engage with gamers. Many of this efforts fail to stand out, resulting in a landscape of forgettable campaigns that oversaturate the market, leading gamers to become skeptical of brands.

Taco Bell needed to find a cool and relevant way to enter their world, one that would not only set them apart from other fast food brands but also, and more importantly, establish a strong and lasting relationship with this large and ever-growing community.

In the world, there are gamers who earn millions by playing, but the vast majority don’t earn a single cent. Ironically, these gamers spend a lot of time playing and completing missions that make them earn loads of virtual money—a kind of money that’s totally worthless in real life. On World Gamer Day, Taco Bell did something no other brand has done before. We gave gamers the chance to turn the virtual money they earn in games into real money they could spend at our restaurants.

The main goal of the campaign was to engage with 18 to 25-year-olds across the country who love to play video games more than anything. To grab their undivided attention, the brand needed to leverage a compelling gamer insight that would be a true game-changer for them. The perfect solution the brand found was to convert their hard-earned virtual currency, which they work tirelessly to achieve, into tangible rewards that could be used to buy their favorite Taco Bell products. With this strategy in place, the brand decided to partner with one of the country's most renowned game mod developers. The primary objective of this collaboration was to bring this innovative reward system to life, making a significant impact on millions of gamers

Taco Bell created a complete world within GTA 5, a favorite among gamers in Costa Rica and a game where everything revolves around money. With the help of gamer developers, we designed ten unique missions, each highlighting different aspects of our brand. These included delivery competitions, searching for hidden tacos, and even quests to steal secret recipes. As players completed these missions, the money they earned was deposited directly into their Taco App accounts for them to use.

The entire event was hosted by top streamers from across the country, which helped the campaign gain significant attention and attracted thousands of viewers. This innovative approach showed that Taco Bell really gets the gaming community's passion, dedication and the frequent frustration of earning millions in-game that are often worthless in the real world.

The campaign was a massive hit for both the brand and the gamers who dived into the Taco Bell world inside GTA5:

Over 1 million in GTA Cash was converted into hundreds of real dollars for use in our restaurants.

More than 3,000 minutes were streamed by top streamers.

An additional 1,500 minutes of organic streaming occurred.

The GTA server was at maximum capacity.


For the first time ever, the countless hours gamers spend playing video games paid off in the form of real Taco Bell cash.