Chick-fil-A advertising: the cows are a product argument told as a joke, which is why the campaign outlived its agency

Eat Mor Chikin is the longest running joke in American fast food and it is not really a joke. A cow telling you to eat chicken is a reason to choose the product, delivered by a character with an obvious motive, which is why nobody experiences it as advertising. The campaign launched in 1995 through The Richards Group in Dallas, as three dimensional billboards showing a cow with a paintbrush painting the three misspelled words onto the board. It has since survived a format shift into video and digital, and a change of agency in 2016 when Chick-fil-A ended a twenty two year relationship with the agency that created it and moved the cow work to McCann New York. A campaign that keeps working after the people who made it have gone is a campaign built on a mechanic rather than on an execution.

This page breaks down what the mechanic is, what changed in 2016 and what did not, the one constraint the brand carries that almost nobody else does, and the parts a smaller food operator can borrow.

Why the joke is an argument

Strip the cartoon off and the campaign makes a competitive claim: choose chicken instead of beef. That is a positioning statement in a category where everybody else sells the same thing, and stated plainly by a brand it would be a boast nobody believes. Put into the mouth of a cow, three things happen at once.

• The claim gets a motive you can see. The cow is not being fair and does not pretend to be. A self interested speaker is more believable than a neutral one, because the audience can price the bias instantly.
• The misspelling marks who is talking. Eat Mor Chikin is not how the company writes. The bad spelling is the signal that this is the cow's message and not the brand's, which is what keeps it funny for thirty years instead of smug for one.
• It is repeatable without being the same. The mechanic generates endless executions, because any situation where a cow could plausibly lobby for chicken is a new advertisement. Most campaigns run out after the idea has been shown once.

That is the test worth taking away. A character is cheap. A character with a motive that happens to match your competitive argument is a campaign platform.

It was built for outdoor first, and that shaped everything

The original work was a billboard with a physical cow on it, painting. The format imposed the discipline: three words, no sentence, nothing to read at speed, and a visual gag that resolves in under a second. The trade press has recognised it as outdoor work specifically, with the campaign entering the outdoor industry's own hall of fame in 2006 and the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame the following year.

Starting in large format outdoor is an underrated discipline for any brand. If an idea works at three words on a board, it will work in six seconds of video, in a social post and on a cup. The reverse almost never holds, which is why a campaign that starts as a thirty second film usually has nothing left when it is cut down. How to judge the site and the message in that format is set out in billboard marketing effectiveness.

2016: what changed and what did not

In July 2016, as reported by Ad Age and the Dallas Morning News, Chick-fil-A ended its twenty two year relationship with The Richards Group and moved the cow advertising to McCann New York, while also working with the newer agency Erich and Kallman on projects. The brand's own framing at the time, from then chief marketing officer Jon Bridges, was a cows plus approach: keep the cows as an essential part of the brand and advertising, and build other territory alongside them. The first significant work from the new arrangement was a virtual reality campaign, with the cows handing out viewers and the chain giving away branded cardboard headsets.

Two things are worth noting about that transition, because most brands handle the same moment badly.

• The asset was defined tightly enough to be handed over. The cows, the misspelling, the handwriting, the motive. A new agency could make new work that was recognisably the same campaign, because what was being protected was a rule set rather than a style.
• The brand added rather than replaced. The temptation on winning a thirty year old account is to show what else is possible. Cows plus is the instruction that prevents a new agency from quietly killing the thing that works. If you ever change agencies on a long running platform, write that instruction down.

Agency relationships at this scale also move with their holding companies, which is a separate matter from the creative work and worth understanding before a pitch. The chain of ownership behind the agency that took this account is set out in McCann Erickson advertising.

The constraint almost no competitor carries

Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays. As a media planning fact that is unusual and instructive: one seventh of the week cannot be converted, so advertising that depends on same day traffic has a shorter runway, and the brand's communication has to work as preference built in advance rather than as an offer redeemed now.

It also makes the point that a real operating constraint, stated plainly and never apologised for, becomes part of what people know about a brand. Operators usually try to hide the thing they cannot do. Stating it is cheaper and it is more memorable.

What a smaller operator can take from this

• Find the comparison your category will not say out loud. Chicken instead of beef. Fresh instead of frozen. Made here instead of shipped. Then find a speaker who would obviously say it.
• Give the speaker a flaw you keep forever. Bad spelling, a bad plan, bad timing. The flaw is what makes it a character rather than a logo with a face.
• Write the rules, not the ad. Two or three lines about what the character always does and never does. That document is what lets a different designer, a different staff member or a different agency make the next one correctly.
• Start in the hardest format you will use. A board, a window, a van, a sign. If it survives there it will survive anywhere.
• Count on the restaurant, not the campaign. National advertising sets up a decision that gets made within a few miles of somebody's house. The weekly ground level work that converts it is covered in local store marketing for restaurants.

What the company does not publish

Chick-fil-A is privately held, so there is no advertising spend figure, no media mix and no campaign results in a public filing. Any number circulating about its budget comes from an estimate by a third party, and should be treated as one. The useful public record is the work itself, the dated trade coverage of the agency changes, and the company's own statements. That is enough to understand the mechanic, which is the part that transfers.

Chick-fil-A advertising: the questions people ask

Who created the Chick-fil-A cows?

The Richards Group, the Dallas agency, in 1995. The first execution was a three dimensional billboard with a cow painting Eat Mor Chikin onto the board.

Which agency does Chick-fil-A advertising now?

In July 2016 the cow work moved to McCann New York, with Erich and Kallman also working on the brand, after twenty two years with The Richards Group. Rosters change, so for current assignments look for dated trade coverage rather than any list, including this one.

Why is Eat Mor Chikin spelled wrong?

Because the cows wrote it. The misspelling is the device that identifies the speaker, keeps the brand out of the boast, and makes a competitive claim land as comedy.

Is Cow Appreciation Day part of the advertising?

It is the same idea moved into the restaurant: the campaign's character given a reason for a customer to participate in person. Promotional events built from an existing campaign asset cost far less to explain than a new promotion, because the audience already knows the joke.

Does a small restaurant need a mascot?

It needs one repeatable thing, and a character is only one option. A consistent line, a signature item, a recognisable sign or one visual device will do the same job, which is to make the twentieth exposure feel familiar rather than new. The requirement is consistency, not a costume.

How long should a campaign platform run?

Longer than the people running it find interesting. Thirty years into Eat Mor Chikin the mechanic still produces new work. Most brands change platform while the audience is still learning the previous one, which is the most expensive habit in marketing.

The place the joke gets repeated without you

A campaign this old is now mostly described by other people. Search for the cows and you get summaries, explainers, fan posts and trade history, and increasingly an assistant's paragraph assembled from all of it. Which means the sentence a brand gets introduced with, to a customer asking where to eat or which chain does what, is written from retrievable sources rather than from the brand's own site. That holds for a single restaurant as much as for a chain of thousands: if the hours, the menu and the thing you are known for are not legible in a place a machine can read, the answer gets built from whatever is. AI Knows Us asks those questions across the main assistants and reports which names come back and what the answers were built from.