Chipotle’s new brand chief gave fast-food burgers buzz. Now he’s coming for fast-casual burritos
Chipotle Mexican Grill needed to do something. In February, the fast-casual restaurant brand reported that traffic to its restaurants fell for the fourth straight quarter to end 2025, and it was projecting flat same-store sales growth for 2026. At that point, the company’s stock had dipped by about 33% over the last year.
The brand needed a boost, and it just made a major move to get it. Chipotle named award-winning marketer Fernando Machado as its new chief brand officer.
Machado’s last CMO role was with plant-based food company NotCo, which he joined in 2023 after two years as CMO at Activision Blizzard. But he’s best known for his epic run of success—and industry accolades—at Burger King from 2014 to 2020 (the last three years as global CMO for BK parent company Restaurant Brands International).
On Chipotle’s latest earnings call on April 29th, CEO Scott Boatwright highlighted Machado as an award-winning, globally-recognized brand leader. “His proven track record of building iconic brands, driving category-defining innovation and leading customer-centric marketing strategies is exactly what we need as we continue to elevate our brand, deepen guest loyalty, highlight the value of our real food, and accelerate our long-term growth,” said Boatwright.
At first glance, hiring a proven and celebrated marketer to reverse a sales slide looks like a no-brainer. But there’s also an argument to be made that Machado’s stunt-heavy strengths are a mismatch for Chipotle’s largely earnest brand image.
Combining the sensibilities that tried to usurp the Belgian monarchy and promote moldy burgers with a brand that makes sincerely sweet animated short films is definitely a risk that Chipotle is hoping will pay off.
Let’s break it down.
Pushing boundaries
Machado believes the greatest risk a marketer can take is producing “flat” or generic work. He has argued that because people are now so good at ignoring the “sea of sameness” across most advertising and marketing, a brand’s first job is to ensure it isn’t ignored.
Rule number one: Don’t be dull.
To do that, he views risk-taking as a necessity. For Machado, the biggest barrier to success is not a lack of money, but a company mindset that is afraid of uncertainty. He argues that to achieve significant results, marketers must push boundaries and be willing to fail or face pushback.
This approach is clear in past Burger King work that was specifically designed not only to make people laugh but also to attract earned media attention and amplify its reach.
The creative tech utility of 2018’s “Whopper Detour” encouraged people to download the Burger King app by using geofencing to target customers within 600 feet of McDonald’s locations and sending them coupons to neighboring BK locations for a 1 cent Whopper. It got more than 1.5 million app downloads in nine days.
The visuals of “Moldy Whopper” in 2020 to promote the chain’s removal of preservatives from its menu; using an ad in 2017 to hack Google Home devices; and putting backyard grills of former McDonald’s execs in 2018 print ads all fit this bill perfectly.
This work was fun and clever, but often had an underlying sneer—especially when it was aimed at the Golden Arches. Machado’s aesthetic thrived in a challenger-brand dynamic, but it’s tough to picture Chipotle swinging haymakers at, say, Sweetgreen or Panera Bread.
Earnest eats
Chipotle’s most popular and impactful brand work has leaned heavily into its earnest outlook on the world, and its role in it. Specifically, its creative focus has been on its food supply chain and its work with farmers.
It began in 2011, when Chipotle launched a stop-motion short film called “Back to the Start,” featuring a Willie Nelson cover of the Coldplay hit “The Scientist.” After the effort exploded online, the brand used it as its first-ever national TV ad by airing it in its two-minute entirety during the 2012 Grammys.
It hit the advertising trifecta of millions of online views, reams of national news coverage, and armloads of ad industry awards.
A decade later, to continue washing the taste of its E. coli scandal out of everyone’s mouth, it dropped “A Future Begins,” another animated short, this one set to a Kacey Musgraves cover version of Coldplay’s “Fix You.”
Its long-running “Behind the Foil” series highlights real employees and the work they do to bring Chipotle’s food to life. The 2023 ad campaign “Human Nature” juxtaposes Chipotle’s methods with those of its competitors, aiming to show its closer connection to more natural ingredients.
The theme here is earnest ambition. Chipotle’s best-known work embraces its healthy food in a way that wants to exist above the kind of hand-to-hand combat advertising that so often characterizes fast-food brand campaigns.
Sincerity meets stunt-y
On the surface, the approaches of each brand’s most famous works are a mismatch. But looking closer, there is a Venn diagram between Machado and Chipotle that could spell magic.
On the earnest side of things, Machado has garnered awards and brand results for 2014’s “Proud Whopper” and the 2015 McWhopper, which published an open letter in The New York Times asking its biggest rival to collab on a burger for Peace One Day.
And on the stunt-y side, Chipotle’s long-running Boorito Halloween promotion gives discounts to people who come into its restaurants dressed in costume. Similarly playful, its “Doppelgänger” work paired app users with the same favorite orders with each other.
Arguably, Chipotle’s best-known brand work has been when it serves a combo meal of sincere content through creative pop culture ideas. Now the brand needs the potentially perfect pairing of Machado’s natural irreverence with Chipotle’s penchant for speaking honestly and directly to its customers.
Machado’s success will be in his ability to layer these flavors in a way that will avoid the dreaded sea of sameness, and gain attention in a way that still reminds people why they fell in love with Chipotle in the first place.