Make that "The Freshman Fifty": Taco Bell wins

It has been about two years now since Taco Bell marketers gave a name to that late-night college habit of binging on bad food: Fourthmeal.

Taco Bell even created an interactive Web site -- modeled on Second Life simulation games -- in order to make it even more real (surreal) for its clients. In it, a self-confessed "corporate shill" explains that young adults need "fuel" if "you're going to burn the midnight oil."

OK.

College students have been eating unhealthy foods at unholy hours for most of the past 60 years. But this is the first time any corporate peddler has tried to name it and attach it to interactive technology in an attempt to get college student money headed in their specific direction.

So has the strategy worked? Has the term "Fourthmeal" made it into the 16-25 lexicon?

Well, it made the Urban Dictionary, and the first reference to it doesn't mention the Taco Bell connection. That's effective (sneaky, disgusting, brilliant: you pick the adjective) marketing. The second entry supposes a connection with Taco Bell.

Several myspace profiles and other social-networking personal pages are registered to people with names that either are "Fourthmeal" or contain the coined name. Now, whether those all have been cleverly placed by Taco Bell ad folks (my guess: probably many of them) or whether most are people who really are silly enough to adopt a marketing strategy as an online persona (sadly, there are) requires more time to research than I have.

One columnist from the student newspaper at Wright State University in Ohio two weeks ago used "Fourthmeal" in a column as a general reference.

Finally, a simple Google blog search indicates that while the habit of eating at Taco Bell late at night may now have a formal name, the marketing strategy has yet to sink into the popular consciousness as a generic term.

In the end, I guess that means Taco Bell has won: "Fourthmeal" elicits visions of their food, not anybody else's.

And nutritionists weep.