Chipotle has built its stellar brand on great customer engagement, customer experiences, and customer loyalty.
Differentiation is the name of the game for loyalty marketers and Chipotle launched a new marketing campaign that touts the differences in food ingredients used at its restaurants compared with others. Chipotle Chairman and co-CEO Steve Ells discussed the new campaign to enhance customer engagement during the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call on July 21.
“With competitors making vague pledges, we’re strengthening our marketing message to continue to show the contrast between what Chipotle has always done and the changes others are pledging,” Ells said, according to Seeking Alpha. “We’ve always and will continue to make our food with the very best ingredients we can find. And once our tortilla project is complete, we will not rely on any of the artificial ingredients that are so prevalent in processed foods.”
To highlight this differentiation, this week Chipotle launched a new program called Friends or Faux, which is an integrated campaign that includes an interactive digital game that invites customers to learn about the difference between Chipotle’s ingredients and those commonly used to make fast food and processed/packaged foods.
To play the game, consumers choose a Chipotle menu item and a representative traditional fast food item, and they compare and match the ingredients, identifying which items contain which ingredients. The online game will include a limited-time BOGO promotion for participants, while encouraging customers to learn more about the Food with Integrity mission. The campaign is also supported by extensive online advertising, Ells said.
“Constantly working to improve the quality and taste of the food we serve is embedded in our culture and our track record to improve our food is unmatched in the industry,” Ells said. “With the strength of our food culture and a unique and compelling people culture that further separates Chipotle from other restaurant companies, we believe we have the pieces in place to continue to change the way people think about and eat fast food and to deliver outstanding results for our shareholders.”
Ells was particularly pleased with Chipotle’s financial performance in the second quarter.
“On the heels of what was arguably our best year ever as a public company in 2014, we have continued to post strong results,” he explained. “During the quarter, we generated revenue of $1.2 billion, an increase of 14.1% on comparable restaurant sales growth of 4.3% and the opening of 48 new restaurants. These results are particularly strong considering the very difficult comparisons we face and keep us on pace with the guidance we provided for 2015. The strength of our business is the result of our focus on our unique food and people cultures, and in an increasingly crowded and competitive industry, these unique and compelling attributes continue to differentiate Chipotle and drive our success.”
During the quarter, the company took a significant step to improve all food served in its restaurants when it completed the transition to using only non-GMO ingredients.
“We began this effort two years ago when we made the decision to voluntarily disclose the GMOs in our ingredients,” Ells said. “Following that move, we worked to eliminate the limited number of GMO ingredients we were using to make our food, which included soybean oil and some ingredients in our tortillas. Today, all of the food we serve at Chipotle restaurants is made with non-GMO ingredients.”