Super Bowl ads are often the pinnacle of advertising creativity and cultural relevance. But with Taco Bell’s return after a three-year hiatus, how do you craft a campaign that doesn’t just capture attention but also becomes a moment fans will never forget?
Joining us today are two creatives reshaping the way we think about food, culture, and branding: Guto Araki, Founder and CEO of Biite, and Alex Jacobs, Co-Founder and COO. Together, they’ve been at the forefront of some of the industry’s most groundbreaking campaigns, including Taco Bell’s much-anticipated 2025 Super Bowl ad and Resy’s upcoming brand campaign. Biite began as a platform for limited-edition collaborations with chefs and restaurants and has evolved into a powerhouse agency creating unforgettable campaigns for some of the biggest brands.
About Biite
Guto and Alex originally started Biite in 2021 as a food culture collaboration studio that connects emerging chefs and culinary creatives to drop super limited, one-of-a-kind food items and experiences. This expertise and deep understanding of what’s happening in the food industry coupled with their background in advertising led to brands such as Taco Bell turning to Biite for food-focused campaign ideas.
About Guto Araki
Guto Araki, Founder and CEO
Award-winning advertising creative behind Taco Moon, Taco Swap, Taco IRL, #IseeATaco, Test Kitchen, Emoji Engine, Quesalupa and others. Former Executive Creative Director of Taco Bell NA & Global.
About Alex Jacobs
Alex Jacobs, Co-founder and COO
Alex is a seasoned marketer with 20 years of experience leading iconic brands including American Express, Taco Bell, The New York Times, Google and many more.
Resources
Biite: https://biite.club/
Taco Bell: Taco Bell 2025 Big Game Teaser | Photobomb feat. Doja Cat
Resy: Resy – Right This Way
Success of the Taco Bell campaign and other work can be found on Biite’s Instagram.
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Transcript
Super Bowl ads are often the pinnacle of advertising creativity and cultural relevance. But with Taco Bell’s return after a three-year hiatus, how do you craft a campaign that doesn’t just capture attention, but also becomes a moment fans will never forget? Joining us today are two creatives reshaping the way we think about food, culture, and branding. Guto Araki, founder and CEO of Biite, and Alex Jacobs, co-founder and COO. Together, they’ve been at the forefront of some of the industry’s most groundbreaking campaigns, including Taco Bell’s much anticipated 2025 Super Bowl ad and Rezzy’s brand campaign. Biite began as a platform for limited edition collaborations with chefs and restaurants and has evolved into a powerhouse agency creating unforgettable campaigns for some of the biggest brands. Welcome to the show.
Guto Araki: Thanks. Thank you. It’s great to be here, Greg.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, looking forward to talking about all of this with you and definitely excited to, we’ll see the Taco Bell ad in a couple of days here. So we’ll get a sneak, a little bit of a sneak peek at least here, but why don’t we start before we dive in with both of you telling a little about your backgrounds and what inspired you to create Biite?
Guto Araki: Yeah, I’ll start. I lived my, you know, I spent my entire life in big network agencies. You know, in the past, I worked at TBWH-Shiate on the Adidas account and then Gatorade. Then I moved next door, worked for Apple. And then I moved two blocks down to Deutsch and I stayed there for a long time, worked on several brands, including Taco Bell. Taco Bell is a relationship that, you know, that we have for over 10 years. And Alex has like a similar story too. So like, you know, like maybe, maybe he can continue.
Alex Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. Long time advertising professionals, both of us. I’ve been on both the agency side over the years, but also on the client side. I’ve worked on Taco Bell, running social content for Digitas at the time on the brand, while Guto was ECD on the brand at the time. you know, have sort of run the gamut. But as far as bite is concerned, it began actually as, I guess you could say, a little bit of a departure from that. And Guto and I are both major longtime food eaters and food lovers. decent cooks, I think, as a hobbyist. And, you know, when we started, it was very much and still is a consumer brand where we collaborate with culinary creatives. This is chefs, restaurants and other people who sort of have something to say in the space and bring them together almost like you would do like a sneaker drop. But the limited edition elements that we are selling are food items and experiences. We did it for several years, we still do it almost every week. And over the course of that time, you know, we always had, at least in our mind as marketers, two audiences. We had the food lovers and we had the food makers. And we would, you know, sell the items to the food lovers and we’d work with the chef and culinary community to create these experiences. And over that time, a third audience sort of emerged. And it was brands. And brands would approach us and just sort of say like, hey, what you’re doing is pretty cool. We try to do stuff in this space all the time. It’s actually kind of tricky. And it is. It’s definitely a unique community that doesn’t necessarily operate on the same wavelength. Let’s call it like corporate culture or large brands. And then we suddenly said, you know what? I guess we’re an agency now. All roads led back to agency life. And that’s how Biite Agency was born. And we’ve really only been doing that for just over a year now. And you can think of Biite Agency as at the center of a Venn diagram. On one side, you have food culture. And on the other side, you have best-in-class creative agency services. And we sit right in the middle. having the surface area that we have through the Bite platform, the consumer brand, where we work with chefs, restaurants in this community every single day, truly gives us a sort of insights, relationships, and just an understanding of this space that I think really only comes from working in it. And we found that to sort of give an unfair advantage to our clients who, you know, are looking for that type of insight and edge.
Guto Araki: Yeah, just to add to that, what’s interesting about the platform itself is that when we came up with the idea, it was actually driven by creativity. When you think about restaurants, it’s a tough business to be in. It’s hard to stay afloat. what end up happening, you know, like what restaurants offer to the audience, not necessarily is what the chef creatively wants to put out in the world, but it’s more of like, hey, what made sense from a business perspective? So when we create Bide, as Alex was saying, as this idea of the drop culture of food, was like, hey, let’s design it in a way that is risk-free. Therefore, these chefs, they can do whatever they want because it’s a limited edition. And then we’re going to pre-sell it. So there’s no risk and it’s, you know, one and done. Now, fast forward where we are still very much so driven by creativity. But what happened is that I think that by just giving the community like the ability to be creative, I think almost like as an organic reward is our knowledge and our relationship with the community, which Alex just pointed out, is it becomes an unfair advantage when you’re creating advertising and marketing for food brands.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about about the agency too. But I mean, I love that, you know, it combines both a deep knowledge of the industry as well as this, you know, the, the creativity to co-opt things that work in other, you know, you mentioned the shoe drop analogy, you know, it’s co-opting some of those things that wouldn’t have been thought of otherwise in the food industry. So it’s a, it’s, it’s a great, and plus just, you know, creativity in general from, from both of your experience in the marketing and advertising world. And one of those certainly, you know, thing I want to talk about first here is the Taco Bell Super Bowl campaign. So, you know, Super Bowl is coming up in a couple days here. We’ll get to see it in a couple days. So we’re, you know, we won’t get too spoilery here. But you know, just to talk about, you know, Taco Bell took a three year absence from the Super Bowl. and decided to come back and work with you guys on this. So, you know, what were some of the key objectives for the campaign and how did you approach delivering on them?
Guto Araki: Here’s the interesting part, Greg, is that in 24, Taco Bell actually opt out of the Super Bowl to do something completely different, which was something that we did with them, was the Live Mas Live. Live Mas Live was a tech style keynote, much like the WWDC from Apple. where Taco Bell basically, just like a tech company would do, they released everything that was going to happen throughout the year. And that came from this notion that in fast food, in QSR in general, is this one up kind of like mentality, like throughout the year, these brands are trying to one up each other with, you know, the new hottest item, menu item. So our insight there was like, hey, instead of making a Super Bowl spot, let’s use the same day because Super Bowl was happening in Las Vegas. So like there were so many celebrities, so many incredible people there. And let’s throw this keynote and basically let’s just kneecap the competition by starting the race from the finish line. Let’s just tell the world everything that we’re going to do, you know, the entire year. And we did that and that was like incredibly successful. Like Taco Bell is doing it again this year, but then now we are doubling down with the Super Bowl. One thing that came up when we did that in 24 that if must live was that Taco Bell really is all about the fans. Like, it’s incredible that, you know, we’re talking about a fast food brand that people tattoo their logo in their bodies. You know, like that, you know, they wait for menu items, much like they wait, you know, for a new pair of Jordans to drop. Like, it is an incredible loyalty to the brand and, And also like there is this code, Alex always says like, you know, this idea that only Taco Bell could do it. And I think that, you know, like there’s a lot to unpack from that statement. But I think that Live Mas Life kind of, I have to say, I was very skeptical before Live Mas Life. I was like, who’s going to go to like a keynote presentation of Taco Bell? Turns out that it was, I think that there was the most, like organically, the most view brand action in 2024 across all brands. So this time around in the Super Bowl, we came back to the client, which, by the way, Sean Tresvant, Taylor Montgomery, Ashley Perlamonte, like, shout out to them because they are visionaries. And then we put them in check. Like, we walk in the room and we’re like, hey, when you say that this brand is all about defense, do you actually mean it? Is that true? And they look at each other and they’re like, it’s absolutely true. And then we said, well, if that’s so, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna buy the most expensive media buy, and you’re gonna put your fans in it. And that was the beginning of this entire journey that now we are close to get to the conclusion. But that triggered us developing the drive through cameras where we captured thousands of fans across America. It also triggered like, wait, so if we’re going to put, you know, real fans in the spot, then we need to say something to the celebrities that we already have signed. So that triggered the entire conversation about Taco Bell with Spain’s celebrities. to not be in the Super Bowl ad and so on and so forth. So, yeah, like this, the Super Bowl spot is here. I think it’s going to be, you know, if anything, a very generous thing. I don’t think that the brand, you know, talking about putting your money where your mouth is, you know, this brand said, hey, you know, like rob all the fans. And, you know, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Alex Jacobs: I would just say it really is amazing. Taco Bell has some of the most interesting, unique, diverse fans you could possibly imagine. Extremely passionate. And one thing we talked a lot about in this campaign was sort of like if Taco Bell is the party where we celebrate diversity, then the drive-through is the red carpet. And so it wasn’t just a matter of how are we going to find a way to like capture fan content, et cetera. I mean, we know with fast food and QSR in general, the drive-thru is a huge sales channel. It’s a major business goal to send people to the drive-thru. But more than that, there was actually a tweet that was read on stage by Sean Trezvant, CEO of Taco Bell, formerly CMO of Jordan Brands. And this, in a lot of ways, was a real inspiration for this. And it’s obviously kind of a joke, but there’s so much truth in it. And maybe I’ll just read it. This is from Christy Yamaguchi, Maine. Amazing handle. The Taco Bell drive-thru at 1 a.m. will have a 200K Mercedes S65 waiting right behind a 96 Cavalier that’s never had the oil changed, followed by a moped ridden by all three people. all craving the same thing, to live MAS. Truly the last great melting pot of class in this country. And if you think about it, you just have a camera there and people are coming through the drive-thru. The incredible diversity of people, walks of life, styles, menu items is incredibly diverse and interesting. And knowing that sort of the fans are what make the brand what it is, that’s where this idea of the drive-thru cam was born. So It’s funny, like, if you think about what are the tropes in common Super Bowl ads, like, the celebrity ensemble spot is the thing. Like, you have Martha Stewart with Lil Wayne and, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it’s a State Farm ad somehow. And so we thought, wouldn’t it be funny if we did the exact opposite? And of course, we have amazing celebrity relationships with the brand. And of course, celebrities factor in in a big way, but what if we turned it on its head? So the whole idea here is, sorry, LeBron James, all-time scorer, Olympic gold medalist, sorry Doja Cat, one of the biggest artists in the world, this one’s all about the fans. And the entire read-up campaign is basically them pissed that they were fired from the Super Bowl spot, on the phone with their agents complaining, whatever else, or in the case of the teaser that just dropped and ran in the AFC-NFC games, It’s Doja Cat photobombing people in the drive-thru trying to sneak in because she insists she’s a fan. It’s a really funny sort of exchange. But so, you know, celebrity factors in heavily in the promotion, but I guess we’ll have to see what the actual spot looks like on February 9th. But of course, it is a celebration of the fans that did come through those drive-thru cams that we, you know, took from city to city across the country.
Greg Kihlstrom: Definitely looking forward to seeing it. And yeah, I saw some of the teaser, you know, teaser things that you mentioned and definitely building anticipation there. You know, you, you mentioned finding a way to not only create buzz and excitement, but also, you know, it’s, it’s got to tie back to beyond vanity metrics and, and tie back to the business as well. How do you look at measuring success of a campaign like this?
Guto Araki: I think that is, there are definitely like hard metrics, you know, like, and, you know, there are someone in the media departments, you know, is, is, you know, crunch the numbers to get to like some sort of ROI and whatnot. But what I, what I like, you know, like to, to tell the clients is like, Hey, we all want our brands to break into culture. And usually you do that by borrowed interest. So there is a reason why, like, Super Bowl spots are this ensemble of, like, celebrities, because, like, it’s almost the hack, the quickest way, right? Yeah. But, you know, what just happened this week, I think, is one very positive, like, metric. Like, I don’t know if you picked up on that, Greg, but, like, Colbert talked about our campaign and the cameras and, you know, on his show.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
Guto Araki: And any moment he mentioned the name of a celebrity. You know, funny enough, he was like mentioning another commercial that had Orlando Bloom and he made a joke about that and then he moved into Taco Bell. And obviously he’s a comedian, right? So like we knew we’re about to be roasted, but what he talked about, it had nothing to do with celebrity, but just the brand and what we were doing. And at least for us, like this is like the most important KPI. Like, you know, are we, you know, breaking into culture? Like prior, like by I was working on another agency where we created the Hulu has live sports campaign. And that it’s gives me like familiar vibes. Like, you know, when we get to the level where like people, you know, see it as part of culture, then we know that we’re doing something meaningful.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Um, so another campaign that, uh, actually launched earlier this month is resi. And, you know, I had the opportunity to great, you know, great spot and really, really resonated. Can you talk a little bit about for those that haven’t, well, we can put a link in the, in the show notes to the, to the spot, but can you tell us a little bit about, you know, the creative vision behind it and, you know, how is the approach here different than from what we were just talking about with, with Taco Bell?
Alex Jacobs: Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, this opportunity to work with Rezzy as a client is an absolute dream. From where we come from as advertising professionals and from what we do with Biite, it is literally a dream client. And to all of our clients, thank you for bringing us into this. It’s been an unbelievable experience. So yeah, just a little background on the campaign, and it got really interesting with the way things sort of unfolded in the first, I mean, I can’t believe we’re still in January right now. It’s been the longest month ever. But this has actually been in the works since the summer, and what a lot of people might not know is that January is a really tough month for restaurants. So the reality for a lot of restaurants, unfortunately, is that it’s razor-thin margins, and you could be one bad week or month away from maybe having to close. And December is very much a boom time for some restaurants where people are out for holiday spending or holiday parties. People are just in general indulging. And that holiday boom can be followed by a holiday hangover. And you go to January and people are doing Whole30 and resolutions and dieting and they’re broke from holiday spending. And the dip in sales can be really severe. And so since the summer, we’ve been planning this campaign all about trying to get people out to show up for restaurants in this time where they really need that support. We were about to hit the button, like everything’s ready to go. We’re about to launch it. Please do, if you’re listening, have a look at the link and watch the film, but it was shot on location in Los Angeles with a bunch of unbelievable real resi partners and restaurants as the talent in the spots. And we’re about to launch this thing and then the LA wildfires break out. And, you know, despite the realities of the seasonal slowdowns and now the acute crisis posed by these fires, In the true spirit of hospitality, of caring for one another and sort of showing up for your community, restaurants sort of like leapt to the front lines and sort of became the first responders to the first responders. And without any provocation or prompt, no one asked. Restaurants, because this is just the spirit of hospitality, almost instantly mobilized to turn their restaurants into kitchens and basically units in a network to feed this effort. We at Biite, we’ve been working with World Central Kitchen, and there’s a ton of organizations all involved. If this campaign was about trying to create empathy and show just how much response show up for us every single day, then suddenly with this response to these fires, we had a demonstration of that beyond what we ever could have picked up on film. And it was truly extraordinary. And so we ended up launching the campaign, but making sure to be sensitive to what’s going on with the fires. But if anything, it underscores the message that restaurants show up for us now more than ever. And here in L.A. and everywhere else, how can we show up for them in this time and all year round? And the film is beautiful the other elements of the campaign are working in concert to sort of mobilize diners everywhere and they’ll continue to roll out over the course of the quarter and this is not just a winter or you know quarterly thing this is a you know resi is a value-driven brand this is a directive all year long And it’s amazing to see the response we’ve gotten so far. It’s been just truly inspiring.
Guto Araki: I think that this one is definitely a special one for us. It’s two things that are super interesting about this campaign specifically. One, another shout out here to Hannah and Allison and the entire marketing team at Rezzy. But these incredibly smart people, they crunched the numbers, Greg, and they realized that in Q1, in the beginning of the year, if anyone made one extra reservation, that could solve the problem of the industry altogether. So, like, apparently, like, from a business perspective, like, that deep into, you know, business in the beginning of the year becomes something that the restaurant as a business drags over the year and end up, like, you know, being one of the causes why some of these restaurants fail. So, like, the brief was incredibly interesting, very business-driven, like, hey, how can we compel people to make one extra reservation? Very cold, you know, like very mathematical. But, you know, like because Alex and I were just so deep into this community, we’re like, hey, there’s something, you know, an anthem for them sung heroes, you know, like people have no idea how much effort and sacrifice goes into running a restaurant. There’s a quote that we like, like, you know, for someone to walk into a restaurant at seven and have a nice dinner, someone else woke up at four and went to fight for, you know, like the freshest fish with the fishmonger, right? So like, if we told this story, it’s an empathy play. It’s a business, it’s a very hard business KPI, but it’s executed through an empathy play. And then the fact, like Alex was saying, that as we’re about to launch, this happened and the community itself mobilized to help fellow competitors, you can even say. It was, it was really incredible. Like, and, you know, hopefully, you know, like the campaign does what it’s supposed to do and, you know, like encourage people to make an extra reservation in Q1.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And yeah, definitely encourage people to watch it. Yeah, it was impactful. I mean, I know a little bit about the restaurant business myself, but it still, you know, it impacted me and was, yeah, it was moving. Before we wrap up here, I want to go back a little bit to your agency, to Biite. One of the things you both mentioned in the beginning was, not only do you have this you have this close relationship to the food industry, which I think informs a lot of the work, but you also have broader experience from the agency world. And, you know, so tying those, those two things together, there’s a lot of synergy is an overused word, but there’s, there’s some synergy there. Do you think that other agents like our niche agencies that are, have deep knowledge in, an industry like food, you know, is that the future? Is that is that something that more agencies should be paying attention to more brands should be paying attention to, you know, what are your thoughts there?
Alex Jacobs: Yeah, I think the word niche is an interesting word. I don’t know that it’s the word I would use. People in creative agencies often talk about insight-driven creative. It’s become one of these almost throwaway types of terms. And in the case of Bite, we have really deep insights about food and food culture, and that help inform the work. But if you think about it, niche kind of implies like focused, small, and not necessarily mass or broad. And if you think about food as an interest area, I mean, Nike has that campaign, if you have a body, you’re an athlete. Well, if you’re a human, you eat. And in the case of food as a niche interest, it helps us focus in a really specialized way to break through with individuals, but that appeal on a mass scale. And so I don’t know that niche is necessarily the future, but certainly having a point of view and a level of understanding and access to really deep insights that help you connect and break through on any given subject matter, that’s sort of always been the key to really great breakthrough creative. And certainly in the case of Biite, helps us develop programs and campaigns and creative that do connect, but also can connect on a mass scale.
Guto Araki: Yeah. And just to add to that, there, there’s several interesting things, you know, like in the beginning when, when we start like, you know, philosophizing about culture itself, I have two kids, one is 12 and the other one’s three. At that time, my oldest one was like around seven, eight. And I asked him, like, hey, you know, what’s Italian culture? And he’s like, pizza, spaghetti, and what’s Japanese culture? And he’s like, jujitsu and sushi. So it’s like, if it’s not the first thing that you think when you think about, like, describing a culture, it’s definitely the second, most likely is the first thing. And obviously because, you know, like what Alex just said, like, you know, if you’re a human, you eat, right? Like, and even, you know, like we have like our head of account is heading to Japan, I think in a week or so. And, you know, like, of course she’s excited about being there, but guess what she’s the most excited about? It’s definitely like the gastronomy of the place. Yeah, so I agree with Alex, I don’t know if it’s niche, it’s almost something that it’s being overlooked, I feel like in branding, the importance of it. But another thing that it’s super interesting, Greg, is how we inherited things that we observe into the industry and apply to advertising, right? As I said, like we came from big network agencies where, you know, there was a time that was I was commanding 12 creative teams, meaning each team’s two people. So it’s 24 people. And obviously not all of them were super senior. Some of them were junior. And that requires a lot of time to guide him through, to give him feedback, to coaching and whatnot. But then when you go to a high-end Michelin star restaurant in the kitchen, they don’t have 200 people in the kitchen. They have like 10. They are killers. They are like veterans, right? Like, they know what they’re doing. They have thick skin. They know they’re incredibly self-aware. They know how to get out of the way. So we run our agency using the same mentality. Like, and this is somewhat an unpopular, like, opinion, but we think that because obviously we’re small, like, we don’t have the luxury to not have only veterans in our team. So our team ended up being like much like a Michelin star restaurant, quite small. The other thing that is interesting too, that we like to tell our clients is like, you know, like I think that in advertising there is this tradition of like pushing back or creatives there are arrogant and they think that the client doesn’t know anything. But when you look at the hospitality industry, It doesn’t matter, you know, like during the service business and near service business, you need to serve them the best possible way. We like to tell our clients that we, you know, we, we, we talk to them as if they were on a Michelin star restaurant. So like, even the way we communicate with, with our clients, which, you know, clients, customers, basically the same thing, right? Like it’s inherited from the food industry, which is like really, really cool.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, I love how, yeah, holistic that approach is. It’s not just like tacking on, oh, we know a little bit about this one little industry or whatever, but it’s really kind of embracing a lot of aspects of it. That’s really powerful. Well, Guto and Alex, thanks so much for joining. One last question I like to ask everybody before we go here. What do you do to stay agile in your roles and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Guto Araki: Ooh, that’s a good one. Alex, you go first.
Alex Jacobs: I’ll go first. I will say this. The easiest way for us to stay agile is continue to take on more and more ambitious projects. You have no choice but to adapt and adapt quickly. And it doesn’t hurt. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we’d be able to do it if we weren’t passionate about it and we didn’t love what we did. So I stay passionate about the work and we always continue to take on bigger and bigger challenges. And that leaves not much Not much room to not stay agile.
Guto Araki: Yeah, that’s a good one. I would say like. There’s a, there’s a person that I admire a lot. His name is Jeff Klien. He’s one of the most awarded creatives in advertising. He created Nike Ride the Future, Most Interesting Man for the Swaggies and many other campaigns. And once he told me like, you know, anyone who can preach about the new is lying because the thing about the new is that it has never been done before. So like chasing, you know, what’s new in an industry that with so many incredible minds who are creating new things all the time is a very, very interesting chase for life, you know, philosophically. And I think that that’s a lot what guides us as well.
