Chipotle and the rise of bags as brand assets

Oversized packaging has become an unlikely focal point for recent marketing campaigns, with Chipotle being the latest.

By releasing a giant takeaway bag, Chipotle is the latest brand to weaponise its everyday carryout materials, proving even a mundane object can have consumer pull.

This ad follows Ikea Italy’s ‘Belli Organizzati’ ("Beautifully Organised") campaign created by Ogilvy Italy. 

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of its signature Frakta bag, Ikea used high-contrast street photography by Salvatore Matarazzo to document the messy, real-world secondary uses of their durable carrier, backed by research showing 65% of owners repurpose the blue bag for tasks like laundry, storage, and moving.

Similarly, to promote its digital-only Family Meals offering, Chipotle skipped standard product photography and instead supersized one of its most recognisable daily touchpoints: the brown paper takeaway bag.

The resulting, limited-edition ‘Big Ass Chipotle Bag’ is intentionally pitched in colloquial terms, leaning heavily into a humorous pop-culture aesthetic by soundtracking its reveal to the iconic Notorious B.I.G. track, ‘Big Poppa’. It's essentially a comically oversized version of the standard packaging millions of customers handle every day.

The narrative

The core creative insight is pretty literal: because Family Meals are meant to feed more people, the iconic bag keeping them warm simply needed to be bigger.

By blowing up a utility object into a massive cultural statement, Chipotle successfully transforms ordinary packaging into a high-visibility billboard that consumers actively want to carry.

Credits

Brand: Chipotle
Campaign: Big Ass Chipotle Bag
Product: Family Meals