Inside Chipotle’s ‘Chronically Online’ Social Strategy
By Jim Caruso
When people hear “innovation,” they usually picture new technology or some sort of scientific breakthrough. But for some companies, like Chipotle, innovation comes from a daily habit of simply listening to consumers. It’s an old adage in software and technology development, made popular by Steve Blank: “get out of the building.” In order to truly understand what your product (or service) is or isn’t doing well, you need to get out of the office (or work-from-home setup!) and actually speak with customers directly.
Unlike decades ago, when this was first popularized, companies now have what feel like infinite ways to ‘talk’ or, in this case, ‘listen’ to their customers. Customers discuss brands online all day, and companies that pay attention learn from it.
Chipotle’s social team meets daily to review posts that tag the brand, good and bad, and turns what it finds into fixes, trend spotting, and campaign ideas. As Marketing Brew put it, the goal is for Chipotle’s social presence to feel more like “a fan account than a brand account.” And its listening habit has paid off.
One of Chipotle’s best ideas started as a fan joke. After Maroon 5’s 2019 Super Bowl halftime show, people online compared Adam Levine’s tattoos to a Chipotle bag, and the joke kept resurfacing for years.
Six years later, in June 2025, Chipotle leaned in with a “Tatted Like a Chipotle Bag” campaign offering a one-hour BOGO for customers with tattoos, and set a sales record. The promotion returned earlier this year, and it’s coming back again this November.
Listening is where it starts, but social listening only shows what fans post, not who they are or what else they buy. Pair the conversation with real audience data, and you’ll know which fan moments are worth acting on before you spend a dollar.
Inside EPIC
Chipotle’s social team has a reputation for speaking fluent internet, so I wanted to see who is actually on the other end of those posts. Using EPIC’s consumer insights platform, I compared Chipotle fans to the general US 18+ population to see who they are, what they watch, and how they shop.
A few things stood out:
1. Chipotle fans are nearly 11x as likely as US adults to have a social media affinity for Mexican cuisine.
2. Chipotle fans are 121% more likely than US adults to have a brand affinity for Snapchat, but only 14% more likely for Facebook.
3. Chipotle fans are more than 5x as likely as US adults to have a social media affinity for the websites of Outback, Chili’s, and Applebee’s.
4. Football is a big part of their world: 59% of Chipotle fans follow an NFL team
5. Chipotle fans are about 2.5x as likely as US adults to have a social media affinity for the Pro
Football Talk and Fantasy Focus Football podcasts.
Chipotle’s fans are as online as its social team, and plenty of them follow football too. That makes the tattoo campaign look even smarter. It started as a Super Bowl joke on social, landed with an online audience that follows football, and gave fans plenty of other options a reason to choose Chipotle. Listening found the moment. Audience data shows why it worked.
Consumer Corner: What I'm Into This Week
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This episode breaks down Nathan Fielder’s new documentary, “You Can See Everything,” in which he follows Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she reports to prison. Scandal has become its own kind of fandom online.
Watching: Venezia FC
On Saturday, Elevate client Venezia FC beat Napoli 1-0 for its first Serie A points of the season.
Eating: Recipes by OST
Lately, I’ve been letting OSTA curate my dinner via social media. My son has been sharing recipes with me, and we’ve used OSTA to translate the videos into recipes. Most recently, we recreated a Cajun-style chicken pasta, which was actually quite good.
