Unique content campaigns are a great way to reach out to your audience and give them something valuable. This is exactly what the ever-popular restaurant Chipotle did with their recent campaign, publishing a series called The Cultivating Thought Author Series. What is this and how can you learn from it for your campaign? I am going to take a look at The Cultivating Thought series and give you some excellent insights that can help you improve your very own campaigns to get major success! Let’s take a look.
What is The Cultivating Thought Author Series?
Ah—Chipotle, the yummy Mexican food eatery that sets anyone’s stomach to growling the instant one reads the eatery’s name! Have you tried their special lime tortilla chips? You don’t know what you’re missing out on till you do. They dip and fry them in lime juice for a succinct, wondrous lemony-lime flavor on salty tortilla chips.
This company isn’t only known for their food, however. No matter what, they always find numerous, excellent ways to do content marketing to bring in new clients and maintain their existing ones. Each time they’ve released a new campaign, they’ve done something unique, and we’ve had a chance to learn from them.
Their latest bit of content marketing is a unique series known as The Cultivating Thought Author Series where well-known authors are creating new content for the company. It was started because someone suggested that the company did something with the blank spaces on their cups and food bags.
In a smart move, Chipotle decided to follow what the customer, Jonathan Safran Foer, suggested and asked 10 well-known authors to write stories for the different cups and bags. This created a fun, unique series for customers. As I said, the idea came from Jonathan Safran Foer, and he happens to also be the curator for the series. The ten authors are:
- Toni Morrison,
- Sarah Silverman,
- Bill Hader,
- Malcolm Gladwell
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Michael Lewis
- Judd Apatow
- George Saunders
- Steven Pinker
- Sheri Fink
Chipotle is known for having a great sense of humor and being well ahead of most of their competitors when it comes to the content game. When you order food and drinks next time at Chipotle, take the chance to read the cups and bags to see what story and author you got! Who knows, maybe people will start trading them like cards?
How Does this Work with Consumers?
This creates a great chance for customers to read and engage while also sharing and comparing with other customers. This can create a great atmosphere for everyone inside the business, and can make friends and family have a fun time together. Going out to eat is always fun, but Chipotle wanted to add just another piece of fun to the equation. But how does this work with consumers? It seems pretty easy, and straightforward – it engages them.
How likely are you to post a picture of a blank cup on social media? Not very likely, unless you’re going for that hipster shot, but that usually only works with a coffee cup. Now, how likely are you to post a picture of a cup with a story on it? Very likely! In fact, you might post it and hashtag #Chipotle #CaptivatingThoughtSeries and whichever author you got, which helps spread more awareness about the campaign. When this happens, more people are willing to head to Chipotle and get food to see what stories they get. I know I have an inclination to head to the nearest Chipotle to experience this!
Why is it Such a Great Idea?
You might be wondering just why this is such a great idea for Chipotle. They’ve already shown that they are a quality eatery with affordable prices and have a few fun campaigns already, so why is this a good idea? Because The Captivating Thought Author Series invokes humanity’s favorite aspect of life – storytelling. All you have to do is take a walk in a bookstore or movie shop to see just how much we love stories. There are tons of different ones everywhere we look, so why not include stories on cups and bags when we eat out?
Chipotle understands the importance of storytelling and makes sure that they use it to engage their audience and make them feel like part of the company. The Captivating Thought Author Series focuses on telling different stories and you never know which one you will get when you head to the restaurant. It can be pretty exciting knowing you are going to get something unique and valuable when you go out to eat!
How Can You Do Something Similar with your Content?
Now that you’ve seen how this works and why it is a great idea, you might be wondering how you can get something similar. You realize that you can’t get well-known authors for your campaign, but that doesn’t mean you can’t gain inspiration from Chipotle. Let’s take a look at a few ways to get a similar campaign for your business!
- Listen to Your Customers. The main thing that helped this campaign get off the ground is that chipotle listened to its customers. When Mr. Foer suggested this idea, the company went ahead and started thinking about what they could do. In fact, they approached him, involving him in the process, making sure they were able to capture his idea for the campaign.
This shows how important it is to listen and involve your customers. You might have a few successful campaigns if you don’t listen, but they will be much more successful if you listen. Involving customers and learning what their ideas are can help you create the perfect campaign, reaching your audience where they are with what they want.
- Use Stories in Your Content. Chipotle also focuses on an important piece of content marketing that some people are overlooking – storytelling. As I said above, humanity really loves stories, so when you use stories in your content campaign, you are able to connect and engage with your audience in new, exciting ways. You can share a story about your company, or do something similar to this campaign where you publish short stories. If you do that, always make sure you have someone who can weave together incredible, powerful stories!
- Create Fresh, New Content. Another thing you can learn from this is the importance of creating fresh, new content. Yes, you can always repurpose your content, but fresh content is a great way to bring in and maintain customers. In fact, fresh content is a great way to improve your SEO rankings and get you more results in the long run. This means that you need to update your website content instead of keeping it the same, write blogs on new topics, and share interesting articles and resources on your social accounts.
- Engage Your Clients with Small Bite-Size Pieces. Because the cups and bags have limited space, this means that the stories need to be short. This shows that having small, bite-size pieces of content can be a great way to engage with your audience and provide them something they will enjoy. The content length debate is still waging, but if you mix things up, you can have a higher likelihood of reaching a wide variety of individuals.
A shorter piece of content gives people who are commuting on trains or traveling for the holidays an easier time to read and consume. If they find the shorter piece interesting, they might be more willing to read longer, in-depth articles. However, you are giving them the chance to read something they find interesting without taking too much time out of their day. This might even increase the chance of the piece being shared on social media.
- Create Valuable Content that Your Audience Will Enjoy. When you write content, you need to make sure you are creating something that offers value to your customers. Chipotle understands the importance of this, which is why they asked top writers to write for this series instead of having employees or customers write in. While there are probably several talented employees and customers at Chipotle, the company was able to know for sure that these authors were great due to their extensive résumés and top-selling work.
How do you know if you have valuable content? Hubspot has a few great suggestions:
- Make sure the chosen topics for your campaign are what your audience wants and needs.
- Your campaign should ask questions, but also provide answers to show why your company is the one people should choose.
- Always make sure your campaign is aligned with what your audience will understand. If they aren’t industry leaders, don’t use industry jargon.
- Make sure your voice and writing are clear and concise, giving people the ability to understand what you are saying and what your aims are.
- Have great examples at the ready to show why your business is the one to choose and why your campaign is the best out there.
Chipotle is great at creating awesome and valuable content, and their latest campaign is no different. Take a few lessons from them and use what you’ve learned in your own content marketing campaigns to have a lot of wonderful success!
Photo credit: Wikipedia.org
