By Mathias Eichler
Sponsor:
The Trail Running Film Festival presented by Brooks -
Back on Tour for 2025.
The Trail Running Film Festival presented by Brooks -
Back on Tour for 2025.
Matt Trappe breaks down the marketing stunt by Chipotle/Jamil Coury on last month’s Strava Segment challenge:
Pointless, maybe. But engaging storytelling? Absolutely.
Matt’s post is worth a read if you want to catch up on everything that went down.
One aspect that Matt didn’t really dive into is that this is already the second year of that Chipotle/Strava challenge. Last year Kevin Russ, who has more followers on Instagram than Jamil Coury, made a tricky pact not to duke it out with the other leaders on the L.A. segment, they stopped running and tied together in first place so all could win burritos. That beat the system, but it didn’t create any media mentions until after the fact. So in a way, they did the challenge, but did’t take advantage of the challenge for their own publicity, outside of getting free burritos.
A person with a larger brand (in running) than Chipotle. joined (for free) and made this challenge his own marketing stunt. How much marketing value in dollars was created? Not sure. But replicating this would also cost a shit ton of money as it would require a celebrity runner to devote an entire month, and a huge amount of miles (Jamil is currently injured because of his final push clocking almost 750 miles for the month) to this promotion. Jamil already said that next time he’d bring additional staff for video editing, etc. which only increases the cost of the stunt.
Not trying to piss on the parade here. I think it was super fun to follow along, and there’s definitely some lessons here that can be applied here. Or rather, there some inspiration that can be drawn from it. But catching lightning in a bottle isn’t something that can be manufactured.
One thing is certain, if Kevin wants burritos next year, he needs to find a segment far away from where Jamil lives.
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