Chipotle: Creating more custom visuals for social

Connecting food imagery to hungry people

Chipotle Mexican Grill is a global quick-serve restaurant brand that aims to make good food accessible to everyone. Their menu items are customizable, so customers can craft meals that are appropriate for any diet. Candice Beck, the Social Media Strategy Manager at Chipotle, partners with their creative team, agency partners, and content partners to formulate social media content calendars every quarter. She works with still photographers, animators, illustrators, and technology vendors to create, curate, and develop content across social channels with a variety of themes. This content is designed to cohesively work together to support Chipotle’s strategy and establish an always-on content calendar. With a mix of their clever and humorous brand voice and beautiful food photos, social media provides a perfect platform for Chipotle to reach their target audiences.

Creating content without sacrificing brand standards

Although Chipotle’s approach to social media has evolved drastically over the last few years, its iconic brand voice has remained constant. Combining beautiful food-focused imagery with the brand’s iconic voice enables Chipotle to stand out and drive engagement with various customer groups on social channels. Subtle cues allow the brand to hone in on certain target groups, while still appealing to their broader audience. The team worked with agency partners to develop and analyze insights based on previously published content. These results fed into a social media plan and content calendar that supports the insights. But this process brought up another challenge: How do you create enough content in a cost-efficient way, without sacrificing the brand’s high standards? Marketing resources were used on other projects, which didn’t leave a lot of helping hands (or budgeting dollars) for creating custom content. Candice and her team needed a solution to help scale content creation while upholding the brand’s high standards for imagery. "Just because we’re asking for more content, we would never let our standards drop. In looking for a content partner, we were looking for someone who understands the brand, understands our high standards, and then executes based on the briefs we deploy."
- Candice Beck, Social Media Strategy Manager, Chipotle