Chipotle - Awareness as Entertainment

Two years ago, Mexican Grill food chain Chipotle launched their awareness campaign through a touching video via Youtube. The aim of this video and overall campaign was to raise awareness regarding the condition in which animals are harvested by almost all businesses. 

The video (above) addresses touchy subjects such as chicken's being pumped with hormones, cows being over milked and slaughtered inhumanely, and the general non natural and cruel containment of all animals harvested for their products. 

The video is wrapped up by a short yet sweet offer of an alternate option (as opposed to slaughtering animals) which sees the scarecrow resort to growing and using fresh fruits and vegetables cooked to perfection and placed inside of a burrito sold instantly. 

Scarecrow investigates deception behind 'all natural' slogans

Although the video addressed extremely sensitive areas, all of which are still relevant in 2016. Were Chipotle wrong to address these issues? Did it backfire? The answer is evident in the same objective measures this blog has used to previously measure success rates of videos on Youtube. Today, the commercial has almost 16 million views, more than any other Chipotle advertisement. The video has almost 100,000 likes, and a mere 3,500 dislikes. So how and why was the video so successful in such a grey area like this one? 

Scarecrow discovers chickens being pumped with hormones

The video presented itself in an extremely elegant and classy manner. Not using actual animals was an extremely smart move by Chipotle as it could've presented the content heavier than it needed to be and turned potential consumers away. Another tactic the video displayed was the touching music playing at the right times in the background. 

Scarecrow decides to grow chilli 

Chipotle decided to ride the wave. Their next move was to continue what the video had started by having a smartphone app developed. In the app, the player has to lead the scarecrow and put an end to unfair treatment and confinement of animals used by fast-food chains as produce.