Chipotle really turned around its brand

-
Chipotle is a very sought-after fast-food chain with its true customization in its meals. The food is fast, fresh and seems very health conscious for most people. Chipotle has really blown up since the health craze of the last decade due to its delicious and safe ingredients. 
Background Information and Research
Chipotle faced a string of food safety crises starting in 2015 that led to a long and painful road of recovery. When the E. Coli. scare first broke it was a scary time for Chipotle. People became afraid to eat at the restaurant for fear of getting sick or worse. Even those who didn’t fear the E. Coli. just had a distaste for Chipotle after hearing of those who fell ill. 
The brand needed to find a way to revamp the Chipotle name while also making a comeback from this crisis. Marketing would be one of the critical roles played during the comeback story of Chipotle. 
Campaign and Results
Chipotle had a decentralized marketing model that flooded the market with promo and BOGO type offers. These marketing tools were driving traffic at all. Chipotle needed to focus on a centralized and cohesive strategy for spending money on marketing and modern channels. The brand was always focused on the fresh ingredients which was progressive in the 90’s but is quite common now in 2015-2019. So, Chipotle focused on better ingredients and not using Big Food or Big Farming for their ingredients.
Chipotle then started focusing on who is behind the food, who makes it a special experience for the customers. This brought in the employee spotlight. This was part of the “Behind the Foil” campaign that aimed to differentiate the chain from less transparent competitors. This campaign showed why employees were loyal during low points and continued to stay with the brand.
The biggest media push Chipotle had in its new brand was running a TV spot during all 38 bowl games. This TV spot promoted free burrito bowls for first-time customers using Chipotle’s mobile app or online portal. It tripled delivery business and grew the baseline by 10-15%. This campaign really promoted the digital side of Chipotle’s business and helped the baseline tremendously.
To add some fun to the new found brand, Chipotle used guerilla tactics during the NBA Finals because they couldn’t directly advertise because of Taco Bell’s official sponsorship. Every time an announcer said “free” on-air during game coverage, the chain tweeted a code that could be used to score a free burrito. This campaign was risky but grew to be a standout examples of how Chipotle has not only won back favorability with consumers and improved the reputation of the brand in an innovative way. These different campaigns brought over 1 billion earned impressions and 100,00 new Twitter followers.

Comments

  1. adamkoncsolOctober 30, 2019 at 8:36 PM

    Chipotle hell yeah! Even throughout disgusting outbreaks of e. coli and other contaminations, I think Chipotle's marketing and public relations have that specific voice that will absolutely let them bounce back from all sorts of catastrophes. Plus no matter how much they mess up, Chipotle is SO good.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stuck at home for spring break

-
Spring break for college students is always an interesting time of the year. As students, we are as broke as a person can be, yet we still plan crazy expensive trips to Florida each spring break. I am very broke and also have very broke friends so each year I spend spring break in cold, dreary Ohio. Each year I make the most out of my spring breaks and choose to do fun, but inexpensive activities throughout the week. Here are my top 3 favorite things to do when stuck in Ohio. 1.  Axe throwing I know this sounds kind of dangerous. It is such a great experience and it 100% safe. I went to Class Axe in Cincinnati. It was about $32 dollars per person to go and you can have up to 12 people in your lanes. You learn fun little games that give you chances the throw the axes all the time. It gets your adrenaline pumping because you want to win the game for your team. I almost was my lanes ultimate champ, no big deal. You get to choose a fun ‘axe’ name instead of having a real name a
Read more

Learning to feed the content monster

-
Image
Social media is a great tool and I’ve been using it ever since my mom let me get facebook when I was maybe 12 years old. Which now that I think about it is too young to be on the internet with a public profile. My facebook still has embarrassing photos of me from 7th grade I swear. In my social media principles class, we are reading a book by Guy Kawasaki called, The Art of Social Media . I’ve only read the first three chapters so far, but each page is beyond insightful. One of my favorite sections is about “feeding the content monster” which is exactly what blogging is like. Finding content, creating said content, and making it interesting enough that those viewing it don’t click away. That may seem easy but it really isn’t. The most useful tip in chapter two for me is the idea of creating an editorial calendar. This is essentially a map of what content to post when, where, why, and to whom. Kawasaki himself is not a huge fan of mapping content out in an editorial calendar bu
Read more

When will he jump the fence?

-
I have an earlier blog talking about the Bachelor’s social media and I am going to write another one. ABC is so smart in how they choose to market their audience. All Bachelor fans love the added drama to the season, plus a good tease. This season they tease Colton jumping over a fence and losing his mind. This happened in the very first in January. It is not March and they are just now saying it will be aired on this episode. People have been making joke Twitter accounts constantly tweeting if he’ll jump the fence. People are creating content focused around this 10 second clip in general. It is crazy how such a little thing was marketed so well. The fence fiasco is giving the show so much good publicity. Millions of people who know what the Bachelor actually is are tweeting, creating Facebook memes and event posting stuff on Instagram about the stupid fence. I am not usually one to get sucked into the madness but even I’m excited to see why Colton Underwood jumps the fence! I have
Read more