Our goal was to create engaging content with an elevated production quality. Since Snapchat has a fleeting 24 hour shelf life of impetuous content, we needed to approach the platform differently. We created a weekly, episodic series called School of Guac.

The show was designed to mirror TV as much as possible. We planted special brand offers, educational tidbits, commercials and other observational, philosophical and occasionally, aspirational humor in a range of creative executions. The classic TV format of variety shows was a perfect fit with individual segments divided into snaps. A range of content left our audience itching for what was next.

Our solution to have more control over video quality was to pre-produce the episodes and upload the footage using a customized capture and publishing rig. This allowed us to have more control over video quality and bypass Snapchat’s standard direct upload functionality.

We scripted and produced 11, 60-second episodes (or Stories) that aired every Tuesday at 3PM. Our host, Hallie Penò, guided us through theme-based episodes which included segments like food factoids, special brand offers, “interactive” games, parody commercials and even on-the-ground coverage of the Election.

To upload the pre-shot footage to Snapchat we constructed a rig that allowed a phone to film a screen playing back the snaps. In a dark room our team would record, add in-app graphics and post one vertical video after the next to complete a story in time for our 3pm airing.

In addition to the episodes, we developed a custom tune-in campaign that ran across multiple social platforms. The campaign was made up of posters, trailers, cutdowns, and teasers to introduce and pique interest in the show, as well as drive traffic to the Chipotle Snapchat account.

? The season garnered 1.3Million total views.

? Each episode (Story) averaged a 77% completion rate; 18% above platform benchmark.

? That’s a cumulative of 141,400 number of minutes spent on the content.

? High schoolers and teenagers showed their interest in Chipotle by engaging with the content with over 2,000 screenshots and more than 700 direct messages.

Our strategy has been further solidified through press coverage that asserted the brand’s entry into Snapchat. Chipotle was able to be first to market in playing to our insight and did so with an organic approach - no media was placed within the Snapchat platform.