Inside Chipotle’s Facebook Commitment Marketing Campaign

TGI Friday’s paid out there Facebook Fan Woody and get a free burger program this week, you’ll recall how myself and others challenged that long-term usefullness of the program (though I’m sure it provided a short-term sales spike). You’ll also recall my highlighting of Chipotle as a brand that is doing a terrific job of Commitment Marketing.  Late last week I reached out to Colin Burns, Marketing Consultant for Chipotle who is also their Facebook Community Manager. Colin was kind enough to answer several questions that I think will be really helpful to anyone looking to understand what it takes to do it the right way.

That's a Commitment Marketing Burrito all wrapped up there

1. How long have you been the community manager for Chipotle’s Facebook page?

First off, I like that you call it a Community Manager opposed to “Interactive Marketing” or some fancy marketing title. Community is exactly what we’re looking to create and I am just another voice, the voice of Chipotle. But to answer your question, I have been doing this since day one of our facebook page which, at this point, is only four weeks old. Facebook kindly asked us to accept a consolidation of various unofficial fan pages and I eagerly volunteered to help in any way possible when that day came. September first came around and the powers that be said “tag, you’re it” and off I went with it.
 
2. How much time to you spend daily as Com Mgr.?

At the moment I am spending an average of two hours a day on our page, 7 days a week. On a day when I post something to the wall I generally am on there for three hours, on slower days an hour and a half. When we post our fans get chatty and I love it. I relish comments on anything from location requests to questions about the food, so those three hour work days (on top of my 9-5 gig) are fun for me. Our fans are like me – younger, passionate about Chipotle, love social media as a means of communication – so the more chatter, the better.
 
3. What do you feel has most contributed to the success of the Chipotle FB fanpage?

So far I think our success with facebook is our simplicity and our dedication to responding to most if not all comments. We see it as a community, as another form of interaction with our customers rather than a download of information and promotions to their news feed.
 
4. How do you manage to keep the conversation (via wall postings) so focused on the brand?

I wish I could lay claim to that but that is just an anomaly. We have had a few blatant spammings on the wall, people trying to push their band or their amazing weight loss cream, but those have been few and far between. Our customers are generally very passionate about Chipotle and it is showing on our wall. Now we just have to keep that love rolling. (No burrito rolling pun intended.)
 
5. Did Chipotle run any sort of promotion – become a fan, get a free burrito – to gain fans?

No, we didn’t. Facebook asked us to consolidate the unofficial fan pages into a corporate owned and ran page so one day 1 we had almost half a million fans. We have lost a few fans that probably don’t want to be a fan of an official corporate page – to be expected – but we have also gained fans over the last month. We have positive comps in transactions, to apply a restaurant term.
 
To be honest, we’re still not sure if we would do something like that. In other facets of our marketing we champion our regular, every day fans, those that have been with us for years and many burritos, and we let them tell our story and spread the love. So if we did something like give away burritos or chips and guac through facebook, it would probably be for our loyalists, our hard core fans that know their managers name, have their favorite crew person to roll their burrito and knows Steve’s last name.
 
But on the flipside we like to “wow” customers, the new folks looking at the menu boards trying to pronounce bar-ba-coa and chi-pot-le, so who knows, maybe we will do something for new fans. TBD.
 
6. How are you guys measuring the ROI of this effort?

We do look at the backside metrics on the page – facebook insights – and it appears that we are doing something right, but when it comes to every day sales, we haven’t gotten that far. But that might be because we aren’t driving sales down everyone’s throat right now. We’re simply asking for our fans to talk to us, we’re giving them what we think is buzz worthy content, and we’re rolling with what they give us.
 
We do look at the “Likes” and the “Comments” and the wall posts we get right after a posting, so I gauge what is interesting (somewhat) by those.
 
7. Are you involved in any other Social Media platforms for Chipotle?

Personally, I am not. But as a brand we are social networking babies. Our Director of PR has a Twitter account (@ChipotleMedia) and we have thrown around some new ideas, but we are literally at the beginning of all of this.
 
8. One tip you would give brands who want to engage consumers, build brand evangelists but don’t know how?

Wall posts and shiny applications and fancy facebook connect applications are great and dandy, but if you don’t take time to answer “Where can I find your shoes in my neighborhood?” you are missing the whole point of social media. It is “social” media for a reason. You are joining the various networks to be closer to your customers, your fans, so don’t be alarmed or annoyed when we the fans want to talk to you. Be flattered, be open, be transparent and receptive and respond. In the end it takes time, work, and dedication to really engage your customers. Dropping a wall post and logging out isn’t engaging customers. And don’t look at it like traditional advertising. Social media is not a billboard on I-35.
 
9. Seriously, what’s the secret to your chipotle adobo? Man that is good stuff.

That seems to be a popular question these days. I’ve seen it quite a few times on the wall and love answering it. To be honest, the secret is that hard to pronounce ingredient, the chipotle. It is the base of the adobo which we use on our chicken, steak and barbocoa, in our salad dressing, pinto and black beans. The chipotle is a brilliant ingredient, smoky, spicy, deep and robust, and is central to most of our recipes.

Colin, thanks so much. And hey, if you’re not already a Chipotle fan on Facebook, join here.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one who recognizes Chipotle’s (and Colin’s) great efforts. Check out this article from the Insight & Ingenuity blog.

Tags: chipotle, Commitment Marketing, Facebook Marketing, TGFI Fridays

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Insight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.