Has Chipotle Mastered the Branded Video?

In 2010, Chipotle ran an ad campaign about Chipotle ad campaigns. The premise was that Chipotle's ad agency was telling the company to put its complaints about factory farming on the back burner and instead focus on its big burritos.
Like much of Chipotle's marketing, the campaign allowed the brand to have it both ways: The company would be seen as a rebel, while shoehorning in a conventional product pitch for those big burritos. A year later, with approximately $800 million in revenue, Chipotle dropped the product pitch altogether with "Back to the Start," a video that featured a farmer who rejects the increasingly industrialized nature of his profession.
At the time of this writing, "Back to the Start" has logged more than 8 million views — quite a feat for what is essentially a treatise on modern agriculture. While the subject matter doubtlessly resounded for many, the unique execution was also part of the video's draw. The ad, created by CAA Marketing, combined an inspired pairing of artist and song (Willie Nelson and Coldplay's "The Scientist," respectively) with stylized CGI that rendered humans and pigs as spherical objects with skinny, dangling limbs.