Chipotle has an 'edgy' new show on Snapchat

Chipotle is looking to Snapchat for redemption as it struggles to escape the shadow left by a wave of food poisoning outbreaks that sickened hundreds of customers and shut down dozens of stores.

The burrito chain has launched a weekly Snapchat-exclusive video series aimed at the platform's abundant millennial users.

The show, entitled 'School of Guac,' is just the latest scheme in a months-long comeback marketing blitz shaped by Chipotle's persistent penchant for non-traditional advertising tactics.

"We're not really a conventional brand," said Chipotle's head of digital marketing, Jackson Jeyanayagam. "Our Snapchat strategy in particular is going to be very different, and it's going to be, obviously, in our tone of voice, and it's going to be fun."

Hosted by upstart performer Lorena Russi, the program is meant to be a cross between a variety show and a news satire format in the vein of The Daily Show.

Russi directs the show's flow from a late night host's desk, dishing on mostly food-related news and periodically cutting to on-the-ground segments.

Jeyanayagam cites such millennial favorites as Key and Peele, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight and The Late, Late Show with James Corden as influences. He says the brand isn't afraid to get slightly "edgy"around topical material if it makes for a more entertaining spectacle.

There's no intended "voice" or "tone" -- beyond the personality Russi brings to the host's chair -- but he hopes to match the playful, anything-goes mentality of Snapchat at large.

"That's not the way we think -- we don't think like, 'It has to have this kind of tone or this message,'" Jeyanayagam says. "We really were like, 'It seems like people have fun on Snapchat; it seems like that's a platform unlike any other where you can kind of just do almost somewhat random things.'"

The platform's ephemeral nature -- each episode is only available for 24 hours every Tuesday -- means there's less risk in trial-and-error.

That approach may be complicated, however, by Snapchat's insistence on reserving its viewership measurement tools for brands that buy ads on the service.

Chipotle says it's using third-party metrics firm Delmondo instead -- but such data is said to be imperfect.

"[Snapchat's] not trying to be Facebook. They're not going to give the amount of data that Facebook does -- at least for organic," Jeyanayagam says. "We're not trying to fight that. We're swimming with the current. They are clearly doing something right."

Even before its brand crisis, Chipotle gravitated towards more subtly branded big-budget projects that aimed to be more entertaining than an average commercial.

Its first few ad campaigns were short animated films built around fresh-food concepts the brand claimed to hold dear. The production value let it forgo TV spending in favor of press attention and digital placements.

Its first advertising effort after the few dim months following the outbreak took a similar tack.

But Chipotle has since put its primary creative agency, Austin-based GSD&M, on notice in order to shop around other agencies, indicating a possible change in direction for the company's ad strategy. Chipotle developed the Snapchat series in partnership with Vice Media-owned Carrot Creative.

According to the most recent data from brand analysis firm YouGov, the chain's revival stalled over the summer, despite wide coverage of the film and a new loyalty rewards program.

The firm's analysts blamed the slump on a University of South Carolina study indicating that meals at fast-casual restaurants had similar calorie counts to those of their fast-food counterparts and, possibly, the cocaine ring indictment of a prominent exec.

A company spokesperson wouldn't comment on the significance of the agency review.

In the meantime, the brand has also continued to make frequent use of its YouTube account and other social platforms to push similar "branded content" designed to sell its food in a less overtly commercial style than traditional ads.