CHIPOTLE | Back to the Start | 2012
The Day a Fast Food Chain Talked About Farming / CHIPOTLE "Back to the Start"
For 2 minutes and 20 seconds, it just talks about farms. No burritos, no smiling staff, not even the product name shows up. For a fast food ad, that's incredibly strange. And yet it ended up winning two Grand Prix at Cannes.
The problem
At the time, Chipotle was often mistaken for a McDonald's subsidiary, and almost nobody knew about its commitment to naturally raised meat and supporting local farmers. The company went through four agencies without finding an answer, so in 2009 it brought advertising in-house. The CMO declared that rather than big advertising, they wanted to reignite word of mouth.
The insight
Fast food is basically synonymous with cheap ingredients. To break free of that, Chipotle needed people to believe, not just be taught. What CAA came up with was to recreate the feeling people had the very first time they encountered Chipotle. A founder who truly believed in this, teaming up with an agency that truly wanted to communicate it—that's how this project began.
The idea
Director Johnny Kelly depicted an industrial farm "returning" to family farming, using stop-motion animation. His reason: he wanted the frame-by-frame, hand-placed filming style to directly mirror the individual care that farmers put into food. The music is Willie Nelson's cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist." The director has said he wanted to show nothing but the contrast between industrial methods and family farming—no smiling staff, no tacos.
What happened
It was first released only on YouTube, with zero paid media. Given the response, it expanded to theaters and television, and the following year Chipotle took the gamble of airing the full version during the Grammy Awards broadcast. At Cannes Lions 2012, it won both the Film Grand Prix and the Grand Prix in the newly created Branded Content & Entertainment category.
Afterthought
If you want to sell burritos, just show burritos on screen. But Chipotle bet on being believed instead. The director has said he never thought anyone would watch a film about industrial farming, and modestly credits the success to Willie Nelson and the team rather than himself. That honesty is baked into those 2 minutes and 20 seconds, and the world took it in, completely won over.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2012
