October 3rd, 2019
How Digital Marketing Saved Chipotle 

Digital marketing tactics helped save Chipotles brand image

Chipotle has gone through a string of food safety crisis starting in 2015. The brand image needed rehabilitation because of its longstanding company image of quality ingredients was suddenly tarnished. What this troubling time showed CMO Chris Brandt was an opening to rebuild around newer areas, one of them being digital marketing. About half of Chipotles consumers are either Gen Z or Millenials so making the brand easier to access through digital media was an easy decision. They had a decentralized marketing model where they would mostly flood the market with promo- and BOGO- type offers which meant they weren’t driving traffic. Fresh ingredients are what defines chipotle but they wanted something more. They decide to start doing employee-driven marketing so consumers have a better picture of how their food is prepared and who is preparing it. One video they did to promote this was a video showing a chipotle cook doing a lid flip trick with one of the bowls on all social channels. The video went viral and received more than a quarter-billion views just like that. They wanted to be more relevant in culture and that’s exactly what the video did. Lastly, pushing into new media channels was a great opportunity for chipotle. Doing promotions involving the college bowl games, partnering with Venmo a (mobile payment platform) and a twitter campaign resulting in a billion impressions and 100,000 new followers were all innovative digital marketing tactics that paid off.

To read more about how Chipotle went from a health crisis to a 1.2 billion revenue increase in 3-months click here.