Chipotle VP: Guacamole-Inspired Makeup Boosts Brand’s Superfans’ Engagement

As brands tap partnerships to reach consumers in more parts of their day-to-day lives, Chipotle Mexican Grill is once again getting into the makeup game.

On Tuesday (July 30), the fast-casual restaurant giant dropped its “burrito-proof lip stain” in partnership with Wonderskin, a brand that has gone viral on TikTok multiple times over for its beauty products. This “Lipotle” Wonder Blading Peel and Reveal Lip Stain Kit is meant to seize on consumers’ social media enthusiasm for the brand, as Stephanie Perdue, the company’s vice president of brand marketing, told PYMNTS in an interview.

“With a highly engaged community on social media, we are always exploring opportunities to tap into the latest social trends in a uniquely Chipotle way that supercharges our superfans,” Perdue said. “We saw a synergy between Chipotle and Wonderskin — two disruptive, Gen-Z-oriented brands — and launched ‘Lipotle’ as their first brand partner.”

Young consumers can be highly responsive to social-media-centric initiatives. The PYMNTS Intelligence special report “Generation Zillennial: How They Shop” drew from a survey of more than 3,600 U.S. consumers, digging into how shopping behaviors vary from generation to generation. The responses revealed that just 13% of consumers in the country had made a purchase in the last month at least partially because of a social media influencer or celebrity. Yet that share grows more than twofold when it comes to Generation Z, with 28% of consumers in this demographic having done so in the same period.

This is not Chipotle’s first foray into makeup. In 2021, the brand partnered with e.l.f. Cosmetics on a burrito-inspired eyeshadow palette and a hot sauce-inspired lip gloss, among other products. The restaurant’s retail partnerships have historically proven successful at capturing consumers’ attention.

“We learned our insight-driven products are extremely sought after with all of these drops selling out in just a few hours,” Perdue said. “We are always listening to our fans and leveraging data and analytics to inform our strategies. Our social team creatively uses memes and other content to see what our community responds to.”

Overall, young consumers lead the way when it comes to the intersection of social media and shopping. PYMNTS Intelligence’s study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media” found that 43% of consumers use social media to discover goods and services, and that share jumps up to 68% among Generation Z.

The restaurant brand has partnered with all kinds of companies, ranging from fitness app Strava to video game creator Capcom. The goal of these cross-brand partnerships is to reach consumers in more parts of their day-to-day lives, keeping the restaurant “more visible, relevant and loved,” Perdue noted, enabling the restaurant to “show up for our fans in unexpected ways” and to “expand our fandom into new territories.”

Indeed, reaching consumers in more parts of their daily lives can be a key advantage. PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that brands are more successful when they can engage with consumers across the pillars of the connected economy: how they work, pay and are paid, shop, eat, bank, travel, connect with others, have fun, stay well and live.