Storyboard: Chick-fil-A's Having a Cow

Chick-fil-A is keeping its cow campaign fresh, even after seven years.

By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 3/1/2003

QSR customers are fickle. One year they love you—think Chihuahua—the next year, well... Give your successful ad campaign too much airtime and they can wind up thinking you’re a dog.

Chick-fil-A is willing to take that chance in its newest flight of television commercials.

For the seventh year, the chain’s ubiquitous cows will try to convince customers to “Eat Mor Chikin.” The first of two new 30-second spots debuted Dec. 31 during the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl football game.

The first commercial features virtually no copy in a showdown between a cow and a bulldozer readying an empty lot for a new (fictional) Circus Burger unit. A lone cow moos and holds her ground while the bulldozers, first one and then a few, try to get her to move.

“I hope that everyone who sees it will see the parallel with Tiananmen Square,” says Stan Richards, owner of Dallas-based Richards Group, the ad agency that has had the Chick-fil-A account since 1995. “Like that lone Chinese dissident, this spot uses a cow to stop the construction.”

Granted, linking a fast-food commercial to the event that brought the cause of democracy in China to the attention of the world in 1989 is a big leap. But Richards thinks it works because it adheres to the principles that have allowed the campaign to succeed for this long. “People recognize that they are seeing something different with the cows.”

The second spot in the new duo is dramatically different, featuring a television news reporter at a live report, covering a 300-pound Circus Burger display that has fallen from a restaurant roof onto a parked car. Above the newsman’s head—and unbeknownst to him—is the cow that pushed the massive burger from its perch, urging the public to “Eat Mor Chikin.”

Serious Fun
Chick-fil-A embraced the new treatments because they fit with the long-term mission of the concept and the campaign, says Steve Robinson, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the Atlanta-based chain.

“Even though this is a fun, light-hearted campaign, it has a serious message. We have a page-long list of what the cows will or won’t do. We call it the ‘Moo Manifesto,’” explains Robinson.

The cows are Holsteins and are always black and white. They never talk and aren’t great spellers. Later this year they may wear chicken costumes, sporting signs that read, “U wanna peece of me?”

“They are just a generic herd, acting in the interest of self-preservation,” Robinson says. “They are not official spokespeople. We do not know them by name. They do not have names. Beyond that, the creative [team] has an open slate to have fun with it.”

Since the cow campaign launched seven years ago, the chain’s sales have outpaced the QSR industry, according to Robinson. Last year, same-store sales rose 4.9 percent, and years prior they increased 6 percent, with one year a whopping 11 percent.

He says that comes not just from consumers who obliged the bovines and ate more chicken, but also from their purchases of millions of plush cows, t-shirts, watches and calendars featuring the cows and coupons for Chick-fil-A.

In late 2002, the chain sold 1.1 million of the 2003 “cowlendars,” selling out before the new year. The $5 calendars include $20 to $25 in coupons and have a 24-hour Cow Channel theme that ties in with the newsman-related TV commercial. The coupons are the only form of discounting that Chick-fil-A is using in a branding approach that is otherwise not focused on price.

In focus groups, consumers rate the cows as one of the three things they like best about the concept; the other two being the food and the fact the chain is closed on Sundays. Robinson says these associations show that the cows are still working at bringing in new customers and bringing back loyal fans. This also gives the campaign significant ad leverage, despite the fact that Chick-fil-A’s ad budget is far smaller than that of the leading burger chains.

Sponsorship of the Peach bowl, news-paper coupons and direct-mail fliers are among the other ways Chick-fil-A gets the cows out.

Bovine Brigade
“Everything we do to support the brand somehow utilizes the cows,” Robinson says. “We would not have the awareness we have if we didn’t.”

In Atlanta, the chain’s home base and the market where it invests the most money, aided brand awareness is more than 90 percent. Numbers like that will be hard to reach in new markets. Chick-fil-A recently opened its first units in Phoenix and is planning to add freestanding restaurants in California (the concept has existing mall stores in the state).

For the next two to three years, Chick-fil-A plans to add 80 units annually, looking at more freestanding restaurants and college and university locations than its traditional mall restaurants. This expansion may impact the demographic of the typical Chick-fil-A customer, which currently skews female (thanks to the strength in malls).

Richards believes the cow campaign is flexible enough to last 30 or 40 years. And Robinson suspects one thing won’t change as the chain moves forward: “If Chick-fil-A is there, cows [will be] there encouraging people to eat more chicken.”