In a recent post, I gave credit to MyChipotle.com for its excellent execution of a so-called “brand campaign” online. The campaign launched in May and features print, bus stop, taxi top and online spots in select cities like Chicago and Dallas which direct customers to:
This campaign works well for several reasons:
1. Illustration: the first thing a viewer sees actually shows the food. It’s appetizing. Looks fresh. Showing good looking food should be a basic pre-requisite for all fast food advertising. Otherwise you get the Burger King debacle from Crispin, Porter which has won plenty of awards but sold almost no burgers as sales and market share at the “The King” have dropped.
2. Headline: it’s simple and bright enough to be seen walking by the bus stop or as tax cabs pass by. This principal should be applied to web ads which are glanced at for, at best, 1 second. Here’s an example of a terrible ad which lacks a headline, has tiny print and black reverse copy which is especially difficult for the aging eyes of the older target audience to read:
3. Call to action: it’s actually very well executed and based upon a consumer insight. If you visit MyChipotle.com you’ll find a site which highlights all 60,000 great combinations that you could make with Chipotle and includes some colorful user generated videos highlighting their favorite burrito recipes. It’s fun, informative and gets you thinking about trying to come up with a new flavor combo yourself. It also gives you a higher sense that being a regular at Chipotle makes you a member of a community.
This campaign is based upon a customer insight gathered from research: consumers don’t feel like Chipotle offers enough variety relative to other fast food competitors. This is despite the fact that Chipotle actually offers almost infinite flavor combinations with every dish fresh made. But most customers actually order the same thing every time.
That said, the campaign does fall short on a few dimensions:
1. Advertising-dependent: if the problem is variety and consumer boredom, Chipotle should also be looking at its product mix, menu design and service process. Perhaps it’s time to introduce a new product or sauce now and then at Chipotle? Chipotle’s menu design resembles a flow where you “pick one” from each of the wrap, meat, filling and sauces categories. But this leads some consumers to feel like a rule is being imposed upon them when it’s not: you can actually pick two meats if you like. Finally, the service process itself could adapt a bit to this. Chipotle could train its employees to prompt stumped customers with friendly suggestions.
2. Lack of follow-through in the store. There’s no tie-in between MyChipotle.com and the stores. You can’t find the nearest Chipotle from the MyChipotle.com site. Nor can you one-click order your favorite user-generated recipes by using Chipotle’s web ordering tool. And finally, no sight of the most innovative implementation which would be to stream MyChipotle.com content into the stores to be enjoyed by customers in the notoriously long lines.
The lack of foll0w-through likely results from an abundance of marketing silos within retailers. The problem is that none of these silos call themselves marketing, but they are crucial to it. The group that does service process doesn’t say that it’s engaged in marketing, but it touches the customer more than anybody else in the company. The people who design the menus and order the signs “aren’t in marketing” but consumers spend more time looking at those than any advertisement. Finally, yet another group manages “technology” and is likely waiting for its marching orders from marketing. But alas, those might not come because the general problem is these companies fail to recognize is that marketing is something that everybody in the company needs to be worried about. In other words, marketing is too important to be left only to the marketers.
That said, Chipotle and its agency Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners seem to be running great campaign which pushes down the barriers between brand and response, bricks and clicks.
