In these polarized times we live in, there is one thing that brings us all together — breakfast tacos. An April Fool's Joke, "Breakfast Taco Innovation" was commissioned in an attempt to bring all corners of the Forty Acres and the Longhorn community together through the power of humor and tacos. More than just an April Fool's joke, the video and social media presentation aimed to inspire awe and serve as testament to the importance of scientific research and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The video leveraged the university's considerable resources as a research university in pursuit of this ambitious goal, enlisting faculty members who have all changed the world and showcasing resources like the Texas Advanced Computing Center's Vis-Lab.
The perfect breakfast taco that the video claims was created in a lab is fake, but the accomplished faculty members and world-class facilities are real. Our team not only produced the main video and news article to anchor the April Fool's joke but also created visual content customized for different social media channels, including promotional cards and highlighted quotes. Together, all of our content uniquely highlighted the university's world-changing work while hooking viewers with fun, engaging and timely distribution.
News of the perfect breakfast taco quickly spread through traditional media reports. More than 100 different media outlets got in on the joke, sharing stories on air and online. In all, that coverage accounted for a local ad value of more than $200,000 and reached a local viewership of 2.8 million people. On Facebook, the video organically reached more than a million users and engaged nearly 80,00 users. Our Twitter content garnered nearly 6,000 engagements and more than 110,000 impressions. The strongly positive response from our key audiences across channels prove we were able to spread our most important message: UT is home to world-class researchers, students and faculty who collaborate across disciplines to make discoveries and breakthroughs with real-world impacts.
