Chipotle is known for its burritos, 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 an original mobile game designed to draw attention to food issues while engaging consumers about these complex concepts in an entertaining, memorable, engaging and shareable way.

The game and its elements (opening cinematic and song), were an opportunity to create a conversation about complex issues through mobile– a game on iOS, song on iTunes and streaming services, film on YouTube, and promotion via mobile ads in other gaming franchises.

The Scarecrow franchise has created a conversation about food in popular culture generating over 614,000,000+ PR impressions to date. Twitter impressions totaled 126,782,322 within two months after its launch.

Since its launch, the film has been viewed over 12,500,000 times on YouTube. The game was featured as an Editor’s Choice on the iOS App Store at launch has been downloaded by over 650,000, playing an average session length of 5 minutes. The game issued 60,052 digital BOGOs (Buy One, Get One free) with a 64% redemption rate.

The song debuted #32 on the Billboard 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.

“The Scarecrow,” is an arcade-style adventure game for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Both the game and its animated opening sequence 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 Scarecrow was created with Academy Award-winning Moonbot Studios.

The game is available for free in the App Store. Players of the game who completed one star in each world were awarded with Chipotle food in the form of a mobile coupon delivered immediately to their devices.

The Scarecrow’s opening cinematic was launched on YouTube with no paid media for its first 4 weeks and distributed along side the documentary “GMO OMG”. It’s theme, “Pure Imagination” was distributed on iTunes and streaming services.

The Scarecrow was promoted by PR, social media, search, mobile ads, and across Chipotle’s assets.