William Espey, the man responsible for the voice of the brand that is Chipotle, joins the Invincible Brand Podcast to discuss the challenges Chipotle faced when managing the E. coli crisis in 2015, and the mindset and strategies they implemented to manage the many dynamics of this incident and the reputational impact it threatened to leave on the brand.
Chipotle is a brand that has worked hard and done a phenomenal job at building solid and trusting relationships with its customers. When the E. coli crisis struck, the brand needed to work especially hard to not lose all that goodwill and trust they had earned throughout the years—and the challenges that this crisis presented were complex, dynamic, and emotionally based, proving to be more difficult than the organization may have initially realized.
In this episode, William shares what it was like behind the scenes of managing this crisis. We discuss the brand’s mindset and culture, and how these things helped them navigate through the real-time challenges they faced.
I recorded this episode with William a while ago, before I decided to rebrand the podcast and relaunch it in September 2018, so I’ve been waiting a long time to share this conversation with you and am excited to do so!