Correction: This story originally stated Chipotle received 173 million views on YouTube. Chipotle actually received 17.3 million views.
Chipotle Mexican Grill said its "30 Seconds of Fame," a college student advertising contest, garnered 17.3 million views on YouTube.com.
YouTube, which was recently acquired by Google for $1.65 billion, is considered by many marketers as the best way to reach the collage-age demographic.
The contest's page views and online impressions were equivalent to an online media buy value of $346,000, Chipotle said.The fast-casual restaurant's cost to achieve more than 17 million views on YouTube: $50,000.
The winner's video received 8 million views in the first three weeks on YouTube.com. Second place had 7.8 million views in the same timeframe. According to a news release, both finalists were ranked the top two Most Viewed YouTube videos during the month they were posted.
The contest challenged students to create 30-second commercials that best represented Chipotle and its personality. The "Most Viewed" component of the contest encouraged students to conduct marketing efforts to drive viewers to the videos posted on YouTube and compete for a $10,000 prize.
"This was an opportunity for students to use their imagination to not only develop an outstanding ad, but to find creative ways to drive audiences to view it," said Jim Adams, Chipotle's director of marketing and bon vivant. "We developed this contest with the hopes of tapping into our consumers to see how they would tell the world about Chipotle. This was also Chipotle's first real step to embrace video and user-generated content and, while we were a bit alarmed by a few of the spots, most of the students did a tremendous job, making us optimistic about the potential for using the spots in other ways."
