FORTUNE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 119C
HANDLEE and his team
have a standing direc-
tive for marketers.
“Don’t make ads. Make
TikToks.” Few brands
have proved better at following that
advice than Chipotle. The company’s
VP of digital marketing, Tressie
Lieberman, discovered the platform’s
power before most. Her team of
so-called culture hunters told her in
May 2019 that TikTok was starting
to pop. “We were seeing millions of
mentions of Chipotle, even in those
early days,” she recalls. “And so we
thought about how we could show
up in a way that would supercharge
our superfans, and that remains a big
part of our strategy.”
The @chipotle account has
more than 1.6 million followers and
30.6 million likes. Anything guaca-
mole-oriented scores. Same for recipe
rollouts with auto-tune voiceovers.
White rice: 9.1 million views. Corn
salsa: 6.2 million. There’s the 15-sec-
ond introduction of a new line of
quesadillas featuring a series of high-
pitched screams: 3.2 million views. “I
love that one,” Lieberman says, recall-
ing the creative presentation with her
staff and agency partners.
“As a 41-year-old, I’m not the
target audience for that piece of
content, but there’s a lot of trust with
the team,” she says. “We’re always
experimenting, and the crazier, thebetter, because sometimes that’s
what attracts the algorithm to get
even more exposure. We’re trying to
find those viral moments.”
Chipotle has developed special
items inspired by creators and
announces them on TikTok along
with other menu hacks. Recently it
announced the inaugural Chipotle
Creator Class, a partnership program
featuring 14 founding members that it
designed to “redefine the traditionally
transactional relationship” between
brands and creators. The company
also held a contest to become the
15th member in which it encouraged
creative Chipotle-centric submissions.
The winning entry featured a young
burrito enthusiast named Wyatt Moss
eating Chipotle in all 50 states in 50
days. “We actually don’t have a Chi-
potle in Hawaii,” Lieberman says. “So
he took his Chipotle on the plane with
him to eat it there.”
Margaret Johnson believes a big
part of success on TikTok involves
overcoming the core demographic’s
aversion to traditional advertising.
The chief creative officer of San Fran-
cisco ad agency Goodby Silverstein
& Partners, Johnson employs a team
of “TikTok ninjas” to discover new
ways to use the platform. “One thing
we focus on a lot with brands is just
making sure that they’re relevant
to their audience,” she says. “With
Gen Z, they don’t, for the most part,Chipotle’s VP of digital
marketing Tressie Lieberman,
pictured in one of the chain’s
restaurants near Newport
Beach, Calif., says “the crazier,
the better” usually works best
on TikTok.
“For every million dollars that
brands spend on influencer
marketing on TikTok, they’re
seeing $7.2 million in sales
over the first 90 days.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE TORENO