VIDEO CASE – CHAPTER 1
MUCHO BURRITO 1ST ANNUAL GHOST PEPPER BURRITO EATING CONTEST
Mucho Burrito, created in 2006 by Canadian entrepreneurs Mark Rechichi, Alex Rechichi, and Sean Black, was a fast-food opportunity that capitalized on healthier and tastier food trends. “Mexican food was underdeveloped at that time and what most Canadians experienced as ‘Mexican’ was not delicious, authentic Mexican cuisine,” states Norm Pickering, director of marketing, North America, for Mucho Burrito. He explains that in 2006, other than Taco Bell and a few independent restaurants, Canadian consumers had little choice when it came to Mexican food. Mucho Burrito gave Canadians a new alternative: reasonably priced, good-quality Mexican food in a fast-casual restaurant. Its mission from inception was to provide customers with unmatched Mexican flavour with the freshest and best-quality burritos—made right in front of their eyes. By 2015, Mucho Burrito had grown to over 115 franchise locations in Canada with additional locations in the U.S.

The fast-food market is fiercely competitive, and today, Mexican food is one of the hottest food trends in Canada. Taco Bell is a mainstay with its inexpensive, lower-quality “Tex-Mex” food, but there are new U.S. competitors in Canada, such as Chipotle Mexican Grill and Qboda, focusing on higher-quality, fast-casual Mexican fare. Various popular, local, independent establishments also exist, such as Big Fat Burrito, Burrito Boyz, and Fat Bastards. Quick-service restaurants also litter the market with short-term promotional Mexican-type products such as McDonald’s Fiesta Signature McWrap.

Mucho Burrito manages the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion) for its restaurants to ensure it meets customer expectations and remains a leader in the Mexican fast-food category. Let’s look at its marketing mix in more detail:

Product Mucho Burrito, fresh Mexican grill, is a fast-casual Mexican restaurant with higher-quality foods than your regular Mexican fast-food outlet. Items are made-to-order with fresh, healthy ingredients. Its name reflects its signature item, a large gourmet burrito with “Mucho food and Mucho quality.” Fast-casual dining is a step above regular quick-service fast food in that it provides quickly made-to-order food with fresh ingredients in an atmosphere that encourages customers to pull up a chair and enjoy. At Mucho Burrito, upbeat Mexican music plays in the background while green, brown, and orange tones reflect its Mexican fare. Many Mucho Burrito restaurants, targeted to the 19-to-34 age group, are also licensed to serve alcoholic beverages.

Mucho Burrito offers fresh, high-quality hand-rolled burritos, hard and soft tacos, quesadillas, salad bowls, and soups with carefully seasoned beef, pork, chicken, fish, or shrimp. Barbacoa (shredded beef) and carnitas (shredded pork) are slowly cooked for about eight hours, and Mexican salsa and guacamole are freshly made each day. Consumers choose menu items, contents, and toppings at the front food counter and watch while their meal is assembled on rectangular metal trays lined with craft paper with logos. The meal is then purchased and eaten within the restaurant or as take-out food.

Periodically, Mucho Burrito introduces short-term, limited-time promotional products to reward loyal customers and to increase awareness and trial with new fans. All promotions are Mexican themed to reinforce Mucho Burrito’s authentic Mexican positioning. Its recent “La Taqueria Trio” promotion, for example, introduced a trio of soft tortillas featuring mango steak, fiery chicken chorizo, or guacamole pineapple carnitas.

Price In line with its higher-quality positioning and good quality food, a meal at Mucho Burrito is priced at approximately $8 to $13 per meal (including taxes), a few dollars higher than the $7 to $8 price point at quick-service restaurants such as McDonald’s or Wendy’s, and slightly lower than the Mexican food sold at Chipotle.

Place More than 115 Mucho Burrito franchises are located across Canada, with additional locations in the U.S. market. Mucho Burrito offers stand-alone restaurants as well as food-court locations. Restaurants are situated in outdoor neighbourhood malls, shopping centres, universities, airports, and downtown city centres. Locations are selected on the basis of anticipated retail traffic, the existence of residential and business establishments, and the presence of other eateries.

Promotion “Promotional support is essential to driving business for Mucho Burrito with new and loyal users,” explains Mike Welling, partner at Mucho Burrito’s brand communications agency, dougserge+partners. “It establishes a distinctive voice for Mucho Burrito so it stands out in the fiercely competitive fast-food market. After years of consistently weaving Mexican authenticity through humour and heavily accented Mexican-English into radio and billboard campaigns, people now associate Mucho Burrito with good quality Mexican food and fun.”

The first campaign from dougserge+partners used radio and billboard ads to establish Mucho Burrito as a fun, Mexican-style fast-casual restaurant. Radio ads used heavily accented Mexican-English to introduce a mythical Mexican character, Johnny Mucho, to highlight the Mexican aspect of the food. Eye-catching billboards, (reminiscent of hand-painted signs seen in Mexico) used artistic graphics, images of appetizing burritos, over-sized logos, and headlines that could not be ignored, such as “Ponchos don’t have buttons for a reason!” to reach consumers. This distinctive Mexican tone still permeates Mucho Burrito campaigns today.

On an annual basis, Mucho Burrito supports its business with quarterly promotions and offers. The emphasis is on the spring, back-to-school, and fall seasons. Many promotions tie into popular Mexican holidays such as Cinco de Mayo, when Mucho Burrito offers $5 burritos on May 5, or the Ghost Pepper Burrito, (made with the second-hottest pepper in the world, the ghost pepper) that is featured around the November Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead. The first “Ghost Pepper” promotion used window posters that showed a fire-monster engulfing a burrito in a stylized illustrative approach very familiar to Mexicans, while local radio ads challenged the “manhood of the gringos” by focusing on the product’s extreme heat and limited-time offer. The poster, created by I LOVE DUST in the U.K., with art direction from Raj Gupta at dougserge+partners, was very popular with Mucho Burrito customers.

The “Ghost Pepper” promotion also used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to create buzz. A YouTube video, created by a film student, showed Mexican gangsters eating Ghost Pepper Burritos, while social media contests asked people to post their most creative photos of a person eating a Ghost Pepper Burrito. In addition, Mucho Burrito launched its first annual Ghost Pepper Burrito eating contest, giving $2,500 to the person who ate the most Ghost Pepper Burritos in eight minutes. “In its first year, the ‘Ghost Pepper’ promotion was a huge success. It boosted traffic by 20 percent and increased same store sales by 15 percent,” states Welling.

On an ongoing basis, Mucho Burrito uses social media and mobile marketing programs to reach consumers. Social media includes ongoing updates on Facebook and Twitter, with its most recent programs including a blogger outreach through its Mucho Ambassador Club where 56 brand advocates, profiled on the Mucho Burrito website, advise on new products and help spread the word on blogs and social networks. Mucho Burrito’s mobile marketing approaches include text message alerts, e-mail reminders, and smartphone apps to engage consumers. On occasion, Mucho Burrito places banner ads on third-party mobile apps such as the UFC app (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and the Urban Spoon local restaurant review app. New Mucho Burrito restaurant openings always receive special attention with low introductory prices and offers.

Mucho Burrito’s website is an important part of its marketing mix. Designed by the team at dougserge+partners, it highlights the brand’s authentic Mexican positioning and provides information on menu choices, nutritional content, and restaurant locations. It allows loyal consumers to register for e-mail updates, log in for gift card balances, and link to Facebook and Twitter pages. Investors can also turn to the Mucho Burrito website for information on franchise opportunities.

“Mucho Burrito is a super example of a Canadian marketing success story,” explains Welling. “Starting with its brand name, it uses its entire marketing mix to consistently deliver on its promise of good-quality, Mexican-inspired food. Its name, logo, restaurant design, products, and communication tools all shout that Mucho Burrito is a fun place to eat good-quality Mexican food at affordable prices.” You can see more about Mucho Burrito by navigating to its website at www.muchoburrito.com.

Questions 1. Is Mucho Burrito a good, a service, or an idea? 2. Who is the target market for Mucho Burrito? 3. What marketing tools does Mucho Burrito use to create relationships with its consumers?

Answers
1. Mucho Burrito was an idea and was founded by two Canadian entrepreneurs. Over the years it became a service. Now it's a service because Mucho Burrito is a food service that has been in the food industry since 2006. Over the years, Mucho Burrito has expanded by adding more locations (115 in Canada and additional places in America), added new things to make the menu (Ghost pepper burrito), made the food high quality/healthy for the consumers and much more. Mucho Burrito has been very popular over the last few years. It has been a very popular Mexican restaurant.

2. In this article that is shown above, Mucho Burrito's target market are customers from 19-34 age group. Also they are licensed to serve alcoholic drinks. Also families come to Mucho Burrito to enjoy the food that they serve.

3. The marketing tools that Mucho Burrito uses to create relationships with its consumers is the way the promote their services to the consumers. Mucho Burrito has created a cartoon figure "Johnny Mucho" this is so that they can promote the Mexican aspect for this restaurant. By getting Mucho Burrito out there for everyone to know the way that Mucho Burrito advertised there restaurant is by putting the ads on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & uses mobile phone programs. Mucho Burrito has low prices for their food that they serve, the prices ranges from $8-$13. By getting the Ghost pepper burrito promoted to the consumers they had a deal on the day of the dead in the fall to get a deal for this burrito. Mucho Burrito partnered with dougserge+partners. By partnering up with them they launched their first campaign on the radio. With all this, they have became very successful as a Mexican restaurant.

VIDEO CASE – CHAPTER 1
RAISING THE ROOF - THE STREET HOUSE

Raising the Roof is a non-profit organization that works with partners at the grassroots level to reduce homelessness in Canada. It encourages businesses, community groups, schools, and individuals to get involved to help reduce homelessness and looks for long-term solutions so that all people can have access to safe and stable homes and the support needed to thrive.

Since its beginnings in 1996, Raising the Roof has channeled over $3.5 million at the community level to help reduce homelessness, and starting in 2010, it has worked with advertising agency Leo Burnett to raise homelessness awareness. Leo Burnett provides its services pro bono (free) to Raising the Roof and works to secure support from other companies so that media time, media space, and other services are provided at no cost.

In 2012, Leo Burnett created an experiential marketing campaign, “The Street House,” in the form of an installation that made emotional connections with people in the city and caught the eye of the media—elements that helped raise awareness about the realities of homeless people. The intention was to dispel the myth that homeless people are lazy, troublemakers, or drug addicts who choose to live this way. There are over 200,000 homeless people in Canada.

The campaign included the installation itself, a provocative cardboard house, as well as an outreach to the media through press releases and personal direct media contacts to provide facts about homelessness in Canada and an invitation to visit the Street House.

The Street House was a mock-house that was made entirely of cardboard, a point that emphasized the fragility of life on the streets, and the fact the homeless people often use pieces of cardboard to protect themselves from the elements. The house was located on a highly trafficked street, lodged in a small alleyway, and open to the public to tour for two days. The installation coincided with the Doors Open festival that annually occurs in Ontario, Newfoundland, and Alberta, with a focus on Toronto that weekend. Doors Open is a heritage event that invites people to visit, tour, and discover beautiful heritage buildings, many of which are not generally open to the public. These grand homes and buildings were in stark contrast to the cardboard Street House, which invited people to come in and tour a living space that lacked many of life’s basic necessities. It was a tour of homelessness.

In appearance, the facade of the Street House seemed to show a small bungalow, complete with a roof and chimney. However, upon entering the house, visitors realized that it was made entirely of cardboard and that the building actually had no roof or chimney. Instead, the house was a series of unsettling open rooms with startling information about living life on the streets. The rooms told narratives on large cardboard walls about the realities of homelessness that included facts and questions that made people stop and think. The narrative pointed to why people may end up homeless, the difficulties that they face on a daily basis, and the harsh realities of living life on the streets. Some rooms asked questions about how homeless people can get money for dinner or how they can find a place to sleep. Other rooms put people in the shoes of the homeless by discovering how people their age face homelessness.
The final room changed the tone of the experience by relaying positive personal stories about individuals who were once homeless and turned their lives around. It also explained the role and purpose of the Raising the Roof organization and how it helps homelessness. Finally, people were encouraged to help reduce homelessness by donating to the cause, volunteering their time, or spreading the word by talking to others or through Twitter, Instagram, and other social media networks using the hashtag #StreetHse. People could also show empathy by signing a cardboard wall of support.

The Street House installation was a resounding success. Over a two-day period, 2,200 people visited the house and over 100,000 people acted to help the homelessness issue. Many more were exposed to this issue through social media postings as well as through conventional media channels that covered the installation in print and broadcast media. Many people were moved by the experience and commented that the house had touched their lives.

Questions
1. What new and evolving marketing practices are being used in the Street House campaign?
2. What role did partnership marketing play in this marketing campaign?