Content Marketing Chipotle Style: Reverse Engineering a “Brand to Emulate”

In both my book on Social Media Marketing and my online social media marketing course for Stanford Continuing Studies, I recommend that you identify a few “companies to emulate.” These are not your competitors; these are brands that you admire, brands that (hopefully) you engage with as a real consumer, brands that are “aspirational” to you in the sense of social media. Then, along the way – you can “reverse engineer” their strategies, whether it’s for their overall social media marketing, their content marketing, or within a specific platform such as YouTube or TikTok. In this post, I want to talk about a brand that I admire: Chipotle. Full disclosure: I also like to eat Chipotle!

Basics. What is the Business Value Proposition? Who are the target buyer personas? And what’s the brand all about? Obviously the “business value proposition” of Chipotle would go something like “affordable, ecofriendly and healthy Mexican burritos” in a casual dining and to-go atmosphere. Chipotle is a “cut above” a brand like Taco Bell, but it’s not a high end Mexican chain. It’s target buyer personas beyond just “hungry people who like Mexican food” are probably men, aged 16 to 25 plus, as the ideal brand target. The brand obviously reaches women as well, but I think it’s fair to say that its core “buyer persona” is a young male aged about 20, who is pretty hungry, on a budget, but wants a “health” alternative to burgers and fries. The brand also has a good mix of ecofriendly and health buzz in it, plus it’s somewhat edgey and friendly.

Digital Assets. Chipotle has the full span of online digital assets –

Chipotle also has an app; thus one of its goals is to drive people to its app and build a community in and around that app.

Next, let’s focus on the “content marketing strategy” of the brand and what the brand can reveal to us about how content marketing can and should be done. In a nutshell, what’s unique about Chipotle is that the brand “gets” content marketing – it doesn’t just post its own “content.” Rather it understands that content on SOCIAL media is SOCIAL content so it pulls out all the stops to nurture UGC (User Generated Content) with fun ideas, contests, challenges, and collabs with key superfans and influencers.

Chipotle’s content marketing strategy is SOCIAL in nature.

Goals of Content Marketing. Here, I think it is safe to say that at an abstract level Chipotle has many of the same goals as other brands when it comes to “content marketing.” For example – a) stay top of mind, that is to stay relevant to consumer who are in its target demographics and buyer personas, to be “the” fast food Mexican restaurant when those consumers get hungry and think about burritos / Mexican food, b) position the brand as a youth-oriented, healthful, socially conscious and ecofriendly place to get yummy burritos – to fill one’s belly, while being (relatively) good to the planet and (relatively) good to one’s health, c) to encourage social spread – that is to get fans to know about what’s going on with the brand, and have influencers, superfans, fans, and customers share content with each other in a positive way. The brand iconography put forth by Chipotle – the imagery, text, photos, videos, etc. – is “in tune” with these brand goals. Just take a look at their Instagram or TikTok feeds and you can see instantly that the brand has put a lot of thought and effort at projecting and nurturing a consistent brand image.

More specific goals can be viewed on key social channels. For example, on TikTok, the “link in bio” area also has a link to the app > thus getting folks to download the app is clearly a key goal of the brand. In addition, from time to time, the brand encourages “branded hashtags” not just #chipotle but also more specific hashtags such as #chipotletastetest.

UGC (User Generated Content). The brand is an expert at encouraging UGC (User Generated Content). To view examples, just check out the hashtags on Instagram and TikTok. Another example of this is the brand conversation around “Chipotle Hacks” which are encouraged by the company as well as by superfans. Another example is the periodic use of “free Chipotle for a year,” in which consumers are encouraged to explain why they are “deserving” of earning free Chipotle for a year. The posts are a hilarious example of the depths to which hungry teenagers and twentysomethings will descend to to try to get free Chipotle! It’s called “freepotle.” They have also created a contest to this end, here. An annual event is “Boorito,” when Halloween costumes mean free food at Chipotle.

Here you should note the heavy use of “contests” and “challenges,” with contests meaning that consumers are able to “win something” for “doing something” vs. challenges meaning that consumers just get “bragging rights” by doing something. The chipotle “lid flip challenge” of 2019 was the most successful example of this. It was kicked off by influencer David Dobrik, here, and became a massive hashtag as #chipotlelidflip.

Partnerships with Superfans and Influencers

Finally, amidst brand posts, you can see the heavy use of “influencers”.  The most recent example is the “Keithadilla” which comes from influencer, Keith Lee (@keith_lee125). Here is an example, the current “chipotletasttest” hashtag.  Keith is a food influencer, who shares food hacks across social plattforms.  You should note that the “Keithadilla” is available ONLY within the Chipotle app, so this partnership with an influencer is designed to create excitement about a “new menu item” and drive people to download and use the app. You can read the backstory about the Keithadilla, here.

The Keithadilla

@keith_lee125 Replying to @chipotle #chipotlepartner The Keithadilla is in the chipotle app WITH the vinaigrette 💕 In my opinion it was the worth the wait 💕 #foodcritic ♬ original sound – Keith Lee

Chipotle Taste Test

@keith_lee125 @chipotle Taste Test 💕 I want to try your Chicken al Pastor order 💕 Enter the #ChipotleTasteTest by 3/22 #chipotlepartner #foodcritic ♬ original sound – Keith Lee

Your First Time at Chipotle

@chipotle *Takes only one napkin* #chipotle #pov #firsttime ♬ original sound – Chipotle

Boorito: (Get a Free Entree if You Come in Dressed for Halloween)

@chipotleBOORITO IS BACK IN-RESTAURANT 👻♬ original sound – Chipotle

Wrapping It Up

Thus, you can see that Chipotle is a strong brand-to-emulate. It knows its brand identity. It knows its target buyer personas. And it pulls out all the stops when it comes to content marketing, creating clever posts plus working with superfans and influencers on contests, challenges, and just plain cool social buzz about “hacks” and “inside” tips that true fans of Chipotle will want to know about, share, and experience not only in the “real” world but across social platforms, especially Instagram and TikTok. Your job is to take what you can “reverse engineer” about Chipotle and apply it to your own company!