Creator content in brand advertising is usually an add-on, an authentic layer around a polished main spot. Chipotle has turned that around for its new national campaign.
According to Chipotle's press release, the finished spots contain not a single frame shot by the brand. All 345 hours of footage were shot by 100 creators in more than 50 restaurants in the US, Britain and Canada, during morning food preparation, with no script and no shot list. The creators have over 100 million followers between them.
Three thirty-second spots were cut from it, titled “For Real”, “Pollo Asado” and “Chili Lime Chips”. They run on national TV as well as on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. The agency partner is the studio KIDS, and for Chipotle this is the first major collaboration with this partner.
Chipotle's Chief Brand Officer Fernando Machado, who was recently appointed according to Lindsey Gamble, described handing over control as a risk. “This is the first time in my career I've made a campaign without knowing exactly what the outcome would be. It takes a lot of trust to give up that control, but there's power in leaving room for the unexpected,” he said in the press release. In his words, “real today is defined by many voices, not just by what a brand says about itself”.
The choice of creators shaped the ad
The decisions were made at casting, before filming began. Chipotle invited food-focused creators, visual artists, animators and musicians into its kitchens. Stop-motion animator Ben Treat turned the rolling of a burrito into claymation. A creator who goes by My Miniature Life built a Chipotle kitchen at dollhouse scale. Among those involved were ceramicist Emme Zhou, domino artist Lily Hevesh and visual artist Alissa Teo.
Lindsey Gamble, VP Creator Strategy & Innovation at IZEA, sees the centre of gravity in the casting. In his newsletter he analysed the campaign and pointed out that creators' content forms the foundation of the whole campaign. The choice of visual format therefore starts with casting. The claymation reached the ad through a person who makes claymation as a matter of course.
The shoot ran without a production company or director
No production company or director in the usual sense stood over the footage. Icaro Doria, founder and Chief Creative Officer of the studio KIDS, described the aim of preserving what sets each creator's footage apart. “The goal was to preserve what made each creator's footage distinctive, rather than make it conform to the conventions of a traditional commercial,” he said in the press release. The visual language of social networks was meant to carry over into broadcast without losing what makes it credible.
The creator RV Mendoza, who analysed the campaign from the perspective of someone in front of the camera, summed up the practical logic for advertisers. “For a brand manager, list the product details that must be accurate, then leave the remaining decisions to the creator,” he wrote on his blog. The brand keeps a check on the accuracy of product facts, and the rest of the direction passes to the creators and their existing format.
The media plan includes, alongside TV and short formats on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the participating creators' own channels. The same material therefore runs as paid advertising and as organic content on their profiles.
The campaign runs in the US, Britain and Canada. It has not yet reached continental Europe, nor the Czech market, so for a European advertiser it is a case study from overseas.
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