Chipotle is known for its great tasting food, but few know that Chipotle has radically impacted the fast food industry and the food system. Believing that the more people know about the company, the more they will become passionate and loyal customers, Chipotle wanted to tell this story.

The result was a content-driven marketing platform, “Cultivate a Better World," designed to emotionally engage customers in Chipotle's journey to create a sustainable future. As a continuation of the Cultivate platform, “The Scarecrow” is entertainment created to draw attention to food issues while engaging consumers about these complex concepts in an entertaining, memorable and shareable way.

“The Scarecrow,” is an arcade-style adventure game for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, with a companion animated short film of the same name. Both the game and the film depict a scarecrow’s journey to bring wholesome food back to the people by providing an alternative to the processed food that dominates his world. The game is available for free download in the Apple App Store.

Players of the game who completed one star in each of the worlds were awarded with Chipotle food in the form of a mobile coupon delivered immediately to their devices.

The short is set to a remake of the song “Pure Imagination” from the 1971 film classic “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” performed by Grammy Award-winning artist, Fiona Apple.

Goals:

• Raise awareness of The Scarecrow experience, generating game downloads, video views, and game player retention, proving consumer engagement was successful.

• Establish Chipotle as a thought leader around food issues and raise awareness of the company’s sustainable, ethical business practices, or their commitment to “Cultivate A Better World.”

Audience:

The campaign targets fans across a myriad of categories – food, music, film, animation, gaming, technology, marketing, design, etc.

The Scarecrow franchise has created a conversation about food in popular culture generating over 614 million media impressions, from hundreds of stories including The New York Times and USA Today. Columns in The New Yorker, LA Times, and others featured educated arguments about food issues by influential farmers, sustainability advocates, and consumers.

Since its launch, the film has generated over 12.5 million YouTube views. Over 650,000 have downloaded the game, playing an average session of 5 minutes.

The song debuted #32 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart and has been purchased over 13,000 times on iTunes.

In its first month, The Scarecrow franchise sparked 18.4 million conversations across 17 social platforms with a 92.7 social sentiment score and, for the first time, made Chipotle the top social brand, replacing Taco Bell, on the Restaurant Social Media Index Top 250 list. Twitter impressions totaled 126,782,322 in the two months following the launch.

The Scarecrow film was launched on YouTube with no paid media for its first four weeks. Solely promoted through PR, starting with a USA Today exclusive and earned social media, the Scarecrow generated over 7 million views. The film became a trending video on YouTube, as the game was featured as an Editor’s Choice on the iOS App Store at launch.

The song was distributed on iTunes and promoted by PR, social media, mobile ads, and across Chipotle’s owned assets (Chipotle.com, etc.)

The film was also the opening cinematic for The Scarecrow mobile game, which has been downloaded over 650,000 times in North America

Later, in the rollout of the Scarecrow, a multi-faceted digital campaign was initiated to increase the viewership, including targeted search, paid YouTube views, and leveraging the YouTube video in mobile games across iOS devices.

Chipotle was started with the notion that food could be served fast without becoming a typical fast food experience. Since its inception more than 20 years ago, Chipotle has developed a deep commitment to finding delicious ingredients that are raised responsibly with respect to the farmers, the animals, and the environment. As part of Chipotle's mission to change the way people think about and eat fast food, they have focused much of their marketing on helping consumers understand where food comes from and how it's prepared, and encouraging conversation about the food system.

The Scarecrow was the lead asset of a PR campaign designed to reach consumers across the nation with a message that forces them to consider the source of their food.

The PR team sought to secure an exclusive story to build buzz and drive further coverage. In media outreach, the team showcased Chipotle’s decision to minimize branding, driving maximum engagement in the video game’s educational content, an evolution of the brand’s unique marketing through storytelling strategy. Communication also positioned the film as a catalyst for conversation about food issues such as industrial farming and food production, and encouraged people to be more curious about where their food comes from.