Chipotle

Leveraging Creators to Build Buzz for Chipotle Catering

Leveraging Creators to Build Catering Buzz

Linhart equipped local food and event influencers with key messaging and assets to promote Chipotle’s new catering service as the best solution for holiday hosting. After they tried catering for themselves, 70+ resulting social posts drove awareness and trial.

Challenge

While Chipotle catering delivered an upgraded experience relative to competitor offerings, including menu item customization, the ability to feed up to 200 people and only a 24-hour notice requirement, consumer awareness of the service was low.

Strategy

Linhart and Chipotle saw an opportunity to use the holiday season when catering needs increase as the perfect time to raise awareness of Chipotle catering and drive sales through a wide-reaching creator program.

Execution

The team researched, planned and executed an influencer program with 27 creators across 16 target markets who met the set criteria: Chipotle fans, sizable reach and solid engagement, a history of hosting giveaways, and a pattern of posting about local events and offerings. Next, Linhart developed a creator brief designed to spread the word about and drive trial of catering. Creators were invited to:

Include key catering messages — like the ability to customize your meal with proteins, salsas and other add-ons, just like you would at Chipotle – and images of the catering spread, plus tag Chipotle to promote the partnership.
Share two catering-for-20 gift cards per creator; one for the creator to try and share about the catering and one to use in a follower giveaway to drive trial. Creators posted with searchable hashtags like #chipotle, #chipotlecatering and #tacotuesday.

‍

81%

posted about Chipotle catering more than once and/or on more than one channel

63%

of posts highlighted the use of catering-for-20 cards

35%

of posts shared a catering-for-20 card giveaway to encourage trial

Results

Linhart generated substantial buzz for Chipotle catering with 71 creator posts, reaching more than 2 million consumers in 16 priority markets, 100% of which shared at least 1 key benefit and included either the provided marketing photos or original photos of the catering spread. Additional results:

22 of the 27 creators (81%) posted about Chipotle catering more than once and/or on more than one channel
45 posts (63%) highlighted the use of catering-for-20 cards for a creator-hosted, Chipotle-catered party
25 posts (35%) shared a catering-for-20 card giveaway to encourage trial

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