Yummy Yummy Digital Burritos In My Tummy

Scrolling through countless advertising sites hoping to find a topic for my marketing blog I stumbled upon a futuristic fast food collaboration between Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. and Roblox.  Roblox is a gaming platform for kids similar to Steam and Chipotle is known for their burritos made to order in front of you much like Subway sandwiches.  Why this interested me is simple.  I like food and video games. Why not combine the two?  Look no further than Chipotle Burrito Builder that launched on April 7th(Happy Burrito Day!)

https://newsroom.chipotle.com/2022-04-05-FANS-CAN-ROLL-BURRITOS-AT-CHIPOTLE-IN-THE-METAVERSE-TO-EARN-BURRITOS-IN-REAL-LIFE.

This ad campaign combines Chipotle’s classic build your own burrito with Roblux’s gaming platform.  Users of Roblox essentially design their own burritos to earn in-game currency.  Chipotle is also letting its loyalty members exchange rewards points for Roblox gift cards.  Chipotle is hoping to reach a younger demographic, Gen Z, by embracing the metaverse. https://www.marketingdive.com/news/chipotle-roblox-burrito-bucks-rewards-metaverse/621566/  

I think the challenge that Chipotle faces is avoiding technical problems with Roblox.  In October 2021 Chipotle and Roblox had a collaboration called Boorito where the first 30,000 players to enter the in-game store got a free burrito.  During this time the Roblox site crashed and players blame Chipotle for the failures. The only thing I see Chipotle doing to avoid this problem is having a longer time period for the event and letting more people get the reward.  They are offering an entree code to the first 100,000 participants. And instead of having the event be two days long it is six days long, but the codes are just while supplies last. https://www.th

e-sun.com/tech/3956946/chipotle-crashes-roblox/

I didn’t notice anything happening with Chipotle’s competition except the stock for the company that owns Qdoba dropped right after the promo launched.  Apollo Global Management, Inc.  ended the day on April 7th selling shares for $57.67 and ended the day on April 8th selling shares at a of $57.56.https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=APO 

I personally think this marketing strategy is kind of weird.  Besides the fact this strategy isn’t targeting me personally I don’t see anything proprietary about this marketing ploy.  I will admit after looking at the price change in what Chipotle’s shares were selling at from April 7th to April 8 that this might be a successful marketing plan, though.  On April 7th at the end of the trading day Chipotle’s shares were selling for $1526.52 and at the end of the day on the 8th they were selling for $1544.11.  That’s approximately a 1.15% increase in one day.  That may seem negligible,  but after watching stocks for a term in my finance class I’ll say 1% gain in one day is still a win.  That’s $17.59 extra for each share owned in one day.  https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=CMG

I would probably do a soft launch in case they have bugs with the site crashing again.  As a casual gamer that knows otaku gamers the most irritating thing you can do to gamers is have an error message display on their game screen when they are trying to reap the benefits of a promo on their favorite game.