Chipotle Unfolds a Magical World

Chipotle’s new “Unfolded” ad has a unique claim to fame – it was the first ad to debut in the Metaverse, with an initial premiere on Roblox. The brand’s plan was always to take the ad to TV – fortunately, as it’s a strong, very individual piece of work that deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience.

You can see some of the ad’s ‘meta’ origins in its charming animation style, though, a recreation in paper of the kind of blocky virtual worlds so familiar from modern videogames. The ad shows a Chipotle truck driving from a farm through a barren landscape, but as the truck makes its journey the world around it unfolds into vibrant life. Fields, crops, wind turbines and some adorable paper pigs appear in the truck’s wake, and the ad ends at a fold-out Chipotle store where the truck makes its delivery.

The message the ad is delivering is one around sustainability – Chipotle’s commitments in that area mean that it’s more environmentally friendly than competitors. But rather than address this idea directly, the brand and agency Venables Bell & Partners used metaphor and a unique visual identity to get the emotional impact of sustainability across. Everything in the ad points to sustainable, environmentally friendly practices – from polyculture farms, to animals given space to roam, to the solar panels on the roof of the Chipotle restaurant at the end. With an upbeat soundtrack – Halsey’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ “She’s A Rainbow” – the positive, emotional impact of the ad comes across without any heavy-handed messaging to dull its effects.

This ad is in line with some of what we recommend in our recent The Greenprint USA report, a look at how brands can best communicate around sustainability initiatives, both in terms of what they are doing and what their customers can do. One of the big themes of the report is that emotional engagement and entertainment is crucial to make consumers feel positive and excited about sustainability, and this is something Chipotle is delivering with this delightful animation.

The ad scores a very good 3.4-Stars on the Test Your Ad platform, but it’s the shorter-term metrics where it really comes into its own. The dynamic and well-branded ad scores an Exceptional rating on both Spike Rating (which predicts short term sales boosts) and Brand Fluency. In fact Chipotle get the maximum 100% Brand Fluency here – every viewer recognizes who the ad’s for.

Brand Fluency in the QSR sector is a powerful asset – as our recent QSR Audit shows, these are some of the most recognizable and widely advertised brands in the country and it’s sensible of Chipotle to leave no room for ambiguity here. But it’s also impressive that they’ve delivered such strong branding within an ad that has such a strong visual identity and is so rich in other detail and so entertaining.