Chipotle - a Fast Food Restaurant Marketing

Chipotle

Chipotle positions itself as a fast food restaurant serving higher quality ingredients at affordable prices. It serves Mexican inspired foods such as burritos and tacos. In addition to its in-store service, Chipotle also offers catering options. It has more than 2400 restaurants spread across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France. Also, It was ranked as the U.S consumer’s most favourite joint in 2017.

1) What forms of advertising are they using and what channels (places they advertise) are they using?

Before 2012, Chipotle spent next to nothing on traditional paid media and focused mainly on engaging customers through Facebook, Twitter etc via various digital strategies. Its marketing strategy also focused on developing more “owned media” and visible event strategies.

Over these past 5 years, Chipotle’s advertising has generally included print, outdoor, transit, and radio ads. It has also incorporated digital advertising into the mix as well and conducts strategic promotions that demonstrate its commitment to its Food With Integrity philosophy. This includes advertising via its various social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

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2) What is the ad(s) positioning? (what does the variety of their advertising convey about the brand)

Throughout most of its advertisements, Chipotle’s seeks to voice its brand values and highlight its mission, which is to ensure that better food, prepared from whole, unprocessed ingredients, is accessible to everyone. Chipotle’s advertising conveys that it advocates for ethical business practices such as food safety and animal welfare and that it supports and engages with communities throughout the United States through events such as annual fundraisers.

3) Are they primarily focusing on affective, cognitive, or conative?

All of Chipotle’s advertisements help to communicate what differentiates Chipotle from typical fast food and hence its a mix of cognitive and affective advertisements. Chipotle is famous for its “anti-advertising” campaign, which flaunts how their advertisements are going against the norm by ignoring advice that ad agencies gave them. The ads themselves contain text that is simply displayed, but very strong-voiced. For example, one ad featured a larger-than-life picture of cilantro and read: “Our ad agency insisted we show a burrito in this ad. But we disagreed because we think our ingredients deserve the spotlight.”  This entire campaign breaks stereotypes of fast-food advertising by acknowledging consumer intelligence and not showing their product. 

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4) What are they persuading us to do? 

Chipotle’s content is aimed at making consumers more curious about its food items and some of the issues that are important to them such as the use of high-quality ingredients and ethical business practices. Some of its advertisements are to create awareness and others such as promotional advertisements, which Chipotle runs couple of times a year, are to encourage sales.

5) Is the message immediately clear?

Yes, most Chipotle advertisements are subtle and convey the message clearly.