2022 superb Innovation and TikTok cartoon – Marketoonist

The WSJ had an excellent characteristic final week on Chipotle and the “Keithadilla.”  It was a captivating case examine on the state of innovation within the age of TikTok tendencies.

In late 2022, a TikTok influencer named Keith Lee reinterpreted the Chipotle Quesadilla as an off-menu hack that included a DIY sauce combining Chipotle-Honey French dressing and bitter cream.  

Chipotle was quickly overwhelmed by a surge of customized orders for the Keithadilla.  The off-menu hack created a large logistical problem to Chipotle workers and their provide chain. Some employees refused to make it.

However in the end by February, just some months later, Chipotle made the Keithadilla a everlasting menu merchandise, which included tech updates to three,200 eating places and coaching for 100,000 workers.

As CMO Chris Brandt put it: “We wish to be on the pulse of tradition.”

I really like how this story captures the stress between lengthy product growth cycles at corporations and ever-changing shopper tastes.  On the heart of the stress proper now’s TikTok, which Corey Robinson, chief product officer for Abercrombie & Fitch known as “a billion-person focus group.”

TikTok is an accelerant and amplifier, however the underlying stress is one thing that companies have at all times needed to navigate.

I keep in mind a Normal Mills exec who used to to inform entrepreneurs, “the development is your good friend.” Simpler stated than achieved: when are you aware {that a} development is actually a development and never only a fad?  

I keep in mind one debate at a stage gate assembly the place somebody argued {that a} specific meals craze was a “Trad”, a made-up phrase that meant it had the sudden spike of a fad however would even have the endurance of a development.  On this case, in the end it was a fad that pale quickly after the brand new merchandise have been launched.

Will the Keithadilla stand the take a look at of time?  Nobody is aware of, however companies that may work out methods to construct in additional creativity, flexibility, and shopper engagement into their operations could have a bonus in a market that adjustments on the velocity of TikTok.

Listed below are a couple of associated cartoons I’ve drawn over time:

“If advertising saved a diary, this is able to be it.”

– Ann Handley, Chief Content material Officer of MarketingProfs

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