There are many ways to describe the experience of carrying a Chipotle order out of the restaurant — satisfying, perhaps, or promising — but the chain has now settled on a more direct formulation.
Chipotle Mexican Grill is introducing its first campaign from Gut, the creative agency it named to its roster last year, and the work centers on what the company is calling the "Big Ass Bag." The phrase, which will appear across television, digital and social media, represents something of a tonal departure for a brand that has historically emphasized its sourcing practices and ingredient quality over, well, the sheer heft of the takeout experience.
The campaign marks the first significant creative output since Chipotle consolidated its advertising work with Gut, the independent agency founded by Anselmo Ramos and Gastón Bigio that has built a reputation for work that tends toward the provocative. (Whether describing a paper sack in anatomical terms qualifies as provocative is, perhaps, in the eye of the beholder.)
For Chipotle, which has spent recent years navigating customer complaints about portion consistency — a subject that became something of a social media preoccupation — the campaign appears designed to reassure diners that they will, in fact, receive a substantial amount of food. The "Big Ass Bag" positioning speaks to quantity in terms that require no interpretation.
Gut, which is part of no holding company and intends to remain that way, according to its founders, has offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Toronto and other cities. The agency's roster includes Popeyes and Tim Hortons, suggesting a certain comfort level with quick-service accounts.
The campaign will begin running this month.
It is not the first time a major restaurant chain has employed mild profanity in its advertising, nor will it be the last. But it may be the first time a bag has received this particular modifier in a national campaign — a distinction that, like the bag itself, is perhaps larger than it needed to be.
Original story published in adage.com: "Chipotle offers ‘Big Ass Bag’ in its first campaign from Gut - Ad Age"