Is it really almost Cow Appreciation Day already? My, how time flies. If you want to celebrate in style this Friday, go to Chick-fil-A dressed like a cow, and, once the employees and customers are done laughing at your credulity, they’ll give you free food. You get a free entree for a partial costume or an entire free meal for dressing "head to hoof." I wonder if two-person cow costumes get two free meals or just one to share between them? Either way, it sounds like a fun, if dorky, idea. Don’t ruin this one, furries.

Activists are finding more creative ways to protest corporate and government policies, with many of them turning to the do-it-yourself mass-media outlet that is YouTube. But in order to stand out in the land of a thousand cat videos, you have at least to be entertaining. Enter the drag queens, replete with outrageous costumes, chicken rap and fart jokes, to mock-protest Christian chain Chick-fil-A. In their quest for meat without the bible, Willam Belli, Detox, and Vicky Vox go for shock value by discussing being gay for pay and taking dudes from behind. Even better, it's catchy. All of which leads to a viral success fairy tale. Will Chik-fil-A stop funding right-wing organizations? No. But it does get out the word for those who wonder why Chik-fil-a is closed on Sundays.

Well over two weeks after what seemed like an ordinary interview with a religious periodical, feathers are still flying over Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy’s comments in opposition of gay marriage. A quick recap: The Muppets have pulled their toys from the restaurants while New York University students pushed to close the unit on campus. The mayors of Chicago and Boston have, respectively, denounced the brand and told it to get lost, and Newsweek published the editorial of an (anonymous) gay Chick-fil-A employee, begging her own community not to boycott the restaurants because it’ll only pluck hours off her own paycheck.

Meanwhile, Aug. 2 dawned to lines around the block at many of the fast-food chain’s outlets for“Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” though a promised “National Same-Sex Kiss Day”—in which gay couples were to have made out over their Chick-n-Strips—was slated for Aug. 3. And all this on the heels of news from the folks at YouGov BrandIndex that Chick-fil-A’s approval rating among customers has nosedived everywhere in America (except the Midwest), with its score falling from 76 to 35 in the Northeast. (Fast food’s average score is 43, by the way.)

Cathy probably did not foresee starting this much trouble when he told The Baptist Press on July 16 that a country attempting to “redefine” marriage is “inviting God’s judgment,” but the latest word from the company’s PR hens in Atlanta suggests that the chain now wishes the whole issue would just disappear. “Going forward,” the chain told CNN, “our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.”

It’s a bit too late for that, obviously. But the truly surprising news to emerge from the brouhaha is not that a known Christian conservative president of a fast-food chain made comments that rankled social progressives, but that a senior executive of his caliber didn’t know enough not to make them. Chick-fil-A is only the latest in a long line of brands that has learned the hard way that gestures of intolerance from the corner office seldom turn out well.

A few examples from the archives: When Blizzard Entertainment (maker of the savagely popular World of Warcraft games) screened a video at its BlizzCon convention in October that included the words “homo” and “faggot,” a week’s worth of outcry from the gamer community coaxed a lengthy apology from president Mike Morhaime. “I have read your feedback and comments,” he wrote, and referred to the video as “shortsighted and insensitive.” In March 2011, when Target’s management gave $150,000 to Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer—a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage—it cost the big-box retailer its exclusive deal to sell the latest album from Lady Gaga, who publicly took her music (and fans) elsewhere. (Said the Chicago Tribune: “From an integrity standpoint, Lady Gaga has scored a win.”) And then there’s the textbook case of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, which in 1991 issued a directive to fire any employees who failed to display “normal heterosexual values”—and then suffered through a decade of controversy and bad press until shareholders finally voted to add sexual orientation to its company policy in 2002.

The details of these notorious incidents vary, but the common theme is the same: Exclusionary rhetoric has this funny way of being bad for your brand. According to David Paisley, senior research director of San Francisco-based Community Marketing, the damage to companies in the wake of cases like these don’t result from short-term boycotts (which vary in their efficacy) so much as the overall stain on a reputation that can take years to scrub off. “The publicity you’re going to get from going down this road,” he said, “is just not good for business.”

Just ask Pete Coors. The Coors Brewing Co. chairman likely still remembers the contentious mess that began way back in the mid-1970s, when his company was accused of submitting potential hires to a polygraph test to determine if they were gay (an allegation that was never proven). Coors endured the ire of gay consumers for the better part of a generation before doing an about-face and offering domestic-partner benefits to its gay employees and openly courting the gay community in its advertising. Coors himself is a highly conservative man, but he illustrated a critical difference when he explained in 2004 that his company’s gay-affirmative policies were “good business, separate from politics.”

And that, says veteran employee training consultant Stephen J. Gill, Ph.D., is the distinction that Dan Cathy failed to make the other week. “It is bad practice for presidents and CEOs to express their personal and controversial values on behalf of their companies,” Gill said. “If they want to attract new franchisees in the future, they need to be careful that they don’t do things to offend.” The same thing goes for front-line employees, too. “Employees want to feel good about what they are doing,” Gill said. “If espoused corporate policy is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect but the company doesn’t do this in what they say, employees notice, and will feel less committed to their jobs.”

Paisley sums it up more generally: “One thing that all sides need to be careful about is that nobody likes a mean person. If you come off as mean, you lose.”

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Would you like chips—er, fries—with that?

McDonald’s is a lead sponsor of the 2012 London Olympics, along with Coca-Cola—and the partnerships have not been without controversy, even though McDonald’s has been part of the games since 1976 and Coke has been backing the event since 1928.

Criticism has mounted in recent weeks. First, there was the call by England’s Academy of Royal Medical Colleges to ban both companies entirely from the games. Then came a motion from the London Assembly (the U.K.’s version of a city council) to impose tighter health restrictions on advertisers at the games.

And in its latest issue, the medical journal The Lancet is teeing off on “junk food and drink giants” for “marring this healthy vision” of athletes at the pinnacle of human physical achievement, bemoaning the presence of the world’s largest Mickey D’s just a few yards away from the Olympic grounds.

The average Briton has also put in his 2 cents—not about the nutritional content of McDonald’s menu items but, rather, about its french fries. McDonald’s fries are the only fried potatoes available at the Olympics, but, Englishmen howl, they can’t hold a candle to those thick, soft, covered-in-vinegar chips for which Britain is famous.

Vendors are only allowed to sell the traditional English chips if they’re accompanied by fish, a rule that’s prompted a small firestorm from Fleet Street tabloids, many of which ran paeans to British cuisine and screeds against McDonald’s. (The Telegraph branded the exclusive McDonald’s deal a “dictatorchip.”)

What started as a Happy Meal-level controversy is now super-sized.

Given the longevity of the McDonald’s and Coke sponsorships, why so much noise this time around?

“It’s important to this Olympics because Britain has a huge obesity and diabetes problem,” said Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “The idea that the world’s largest McDonald’s is in a country that can ill afford to eat there is very disturbing.”

McDonald’s contends it is meeting consumer advocates more than halfway. “We’re launching QR codes on packaging and cups in our restaurants on the park, a rollout that will land in a majority of our markets by the end of 2013,” a spokeswoman said. She also emphasized the chain’s inclusion of fruit and vegetables in Happy Meals at the games, as well as local favorites like porridge.

Lustig said that while some can consume burgers and drink Coke to no ill effect, they’re not the viewers of the Olympics but the participants.

“If you’re an athlete and you consume a Coca-Cola, your liver will convert it into glycogen, and you’ll get some energy for the next bout or race,” he said. “So can people get energy repletion from a Coca-Cola? Yes, but they’re not advertising to those people. They’re advertising to fat people, and fat people are going to drink a Coca-Cola, and it’s going to turn into liver fat.”

In fact, swimmer and gold medalist Ricky Berens tweeted a picture of his post-victory McDonald’s meal, composed of two medium orders of french fries, two Quarter Pounders with Cheese, a Big Mac, six-piece Chicken McNuggets and a McFlurry.

So the message here may not, in fact, be “Don’t eat McDonald’s,” but “Start swimming.”

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Here's a decent deal if you're gay, but you still somehow love Chick-fil-A: Renounce your homosexuality, and get a free chicken sandwich! The prank promotion, playing off Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's vocal opposition to equal marriage, was created by the satirical Chick-fil-A Foundation, whose founders actually managed to redeem one of the coupons (as seen in the video below). The fine print includes a handful of laugh lines, including "Limit one sandwich per saved person." Via The Ethical Adman.

Behold! Various Chick-fil-A's around the nation are hosting medieval-themed Mother-Son Date Knights. Oh the perils of marketing that occur when franchises create their own LOL-worthy events. According to the press release, "During this special medieval-themed evening, moms and their sons are encouraged to spend some time together while they enjoy dinner, great conversation and several special activities." The special activities are unnamed, and probably vary by region. But last year in DC, the event included getting to meet a knight from the Maryland Renaissance Festival (because medieval and Renaissance are the same thing) and … a car show. So, yes, Chick-fil-A, which has absolutely no brand connection to feudalism, has decided to promote mother-son relationships by providing placemats with "fun questions" and a "take-home booklet" in Ohio, North Caroline, Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas and Missouri. Placemats are free, food is not. So, ladies, gather up your young lords and proceed forthwith to MotherSonDate.com to make reservations at ye olde local Chik-fil-A. I'm sure it will be a knight to remember.

In December 1971, Ray Kroc paid a visit to a McDonald’s restaurant owned by Herb Peterson. The fast-food chain’s president had learned that the franchisee had cooked up something that would solve a problem that had confounded Kroc for years: McDonald’s did no breakfast business. Kroc sat down, and Peterson served him what looked like a hockey puck: a poached egg with a slice of cheese and Canadian bacon on a toasted English muffin. Kroc ate one sandwich—and then a second.

The Egg McMuffin turns 40 years old this year, and with breakfast now making up 25 percent of McDonald’s sales, this egg on a bun is a cornerstone of the chain’s menu—so critical to the $12.5 billion breakfast market that McDonald’s is considering serving the Egg McMuffin all day.

So it’s probably no surprise that the chain is still advertising the sandwich—and using an approach that’s compositionally similar to one it used in the 1970s when the McMuffin was new. To wit: a nice big shot of the food, big play for the word “morning” and some feel-good copy about great taste and freshness, etc. According to Prof. Jordan LeBel, who teaches food marketing at Montreal’s Concordia University, while advertising for casual-dining chains has grown more sophisticated—graduating to messages about the emotional connections people make when they go out to eat—fast-food marketing seems stuck in a time warp. “It’s still all about showing what’s big and juicy,” LeBel said. “Fast-food chains keep hitting the sensory and the visceral. They sort of have to. There’s intense competition.”

He’s not kidding. Even Chick-fil-A is serving up a Chicken Egg and Cheese Bagel these days. Yet for as similar as these ads may look, they’re also a gauge of how much American appetites have changed. In 1979, the brand’s overriding problem was simply turning consumers onto the idea of visiting a burger chain in the morning. “McDonald’s wanted to showcase the product in the ad—and make it look as mouthwatering as possible,” LeBel said.

Today, America’s raging obesity epidemic and worries over convenience foods’ oft-dubious ingredients have forced this 2013 ad to leap over a higher bar. Indeed, the breakfast item before us is the Egg White Delight McMuffin, a pale and anemic cousin to the zesty, cholesterol-laden 1970s original. The taxicab-yellow slice of American cheese has been kicked off the bun, too. And what’s with those coupons? Competition from the so-called “fast casual” chains like Panera Bread has bitten off some of McDonald’s market share, necessitating traffic-builder gimmicks like these. “They’re trying to do a lot of things in this cluttered ad,” LeBel lamented. “You can barely see the product.”

Which is too bad, really. Cutting the fat and calorie count is a noble goal, of course, but as Ray Kroc himself attested, that old Egg McMuffin was one hell of a tasty sandwich.

Could the hamburger, the long-reigning, all-American favorite, finally be toast?

Beef burgers made their name as a workingman’s meal during the Great Depression—before evolving into the symbol of American corporatism and cultural hegemony that they have become. The Economist, singing the praises of the burger, once called it “a symbol of the reassuring predictability, the pre-packaged straightforwardness, the sheer lack of pretension of American life.”

But move over, burger—chicken is having a moment.

For the first time in a century, Americans are gobbling up more of the humble bird—much of it in the form of fried chicken drumsticks, crispy chicken sandwiches and chicken nuggets—than double cheeseburgers, sliders and T-bones. Chicken consumption, after growing steadily over the last five years, last year finally paced ahead of beef, according to the USDA. This, as a four-year drought in Texas, which produces the bulk of our beef, has forced prices skyward and triggered a beef shortage. On the flip side, there is such tremendous demand for chicken that this is shaping up to be the most profitable year ever for chicken producers, as Bloomberg reports, with a surge in wholesale prices boosting profits for giants like Arkansas-based Tyson Foods.

It’s little wonder, then, that fast-food chains like Burger King are jumping into poultry in a big way, even as a couple of heavy hitters already well-known for their bird—Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and Chick-fil-A—are enjoying a growth spurt. “As we see a systemic decline in beef consumption, relatively inexpensive and easily available chicken is turning into the universal protein,” notes John Gordon, analyst and principal at Pacific Management Consulting Group.

Just how hot is chicken? Last year, U.S. sales at limited-service chicken chains shot up 4 percent, while comparable burger chains saw less than half that growth, with a 1.5 percent bump, per Technomic. Particularly revealing, Chick-fil-A became the No. 1 fast-food outlet in the U.S. in per store sales as of 2012, tallying $3.1 million per location, versus $2.6 million for McDonald’s and $1.2 million for Burger King. Even Domino’s—in the process of phasing “pizza” out of its name—has caught chicken fever, launching its Specialty Chicken line in April with a national TV campaign from lead creative agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The new menu offering consists of a dozen chunks of breaded chicken breast covered with sauce, cheese and assorted pizza toppings. “This is a one-of-a-kind product that reinvents the way chicken is served in our industry,” boasts Russell Weiner, Domino’s CMO. “Our pizza expertise inspires items like this outside of the traditional pizza category.”

TV spots promoting Domino’s concoction focus on how the company isn’t afraid to take risks and, in keeping with its recent marketing messaging, how it sometimes fails. “We are proud to be known as a pizza company, but Specialty Chicken shows we are not afraid to step out of our comfort zone,” says Weiner. “We encourage our team members to keep trying to get better. Failure sometimes shows itself on the road to success.”

Burger King, stinging from a 1 percent dip in U.S. sales in 2013, recently debuted its Chicken Big King sandwich and dusted off its legendary “Subservient Chicken” campaign, created by Crispin and The Barbarian Group a decade ago. It relaunched the website subservientchicken.com, which made advertising history by putting an actor in a chicken suit who seemingly performed stunts on command. (In reality, numerous possible reactions were filmed.) This time around, the site sports a video about the fabled “chicken man,” claiming he’s gone MIA. As part of the campaign, the fugitive chicken shows up in unexpected places, prompting Twitter sightings.

The South Rises
Leading this charge are two chains based in the Southeast, a region where fried chicken is taken as seriously as football, iced tea and God.

Last year, Chick-fil-A—which lately has earned headlines not so much for its food as for its outspoken, conservative Christian CEO Dan Cathy—strutted ahead of Kentucky Fried Chicken in total sales, even though Chick-fil-A has only 1,800 U.S. outlets to KFC’s 4,500. And Chick-fil-A is in rapid-expansion mode, with outlets slated for the West, Midwest and Northeast, including New York City (where it currently boasts but one location, inside a dorm at New York University in Greenwich Village). The chain plans to be a presence in 41 states by this fall. 

While its fried chicken sandwich with pickles on a soft, buttery bun made it a legend, last month Chick-fil-A got serious about becoming the healthy choice among chicken joints, replacing its char-grilled sandwiches with three grilled chicken items. “This is the largest investment we’ve made in a product launch,” says CMO Steve Robinson. “We’ve been working for years to get this grilled product right, even inventing our own grill. It’s all part of our commitment to be the better-for-you fast food.”

Next up for Chick-fil-A: persuading more consumers to choose chicken for breakfast, with items such as chicken and waffles on the front burner.

One thing that will remain a constant at Chick-fil-A is its distinctive marketing from Dallas-based The Richards Group. The centerpiece of the advertising is an anthropomorphic cow wearing a sandwich board that urges consumers to “Eat Mor Chikin.” Campaigns encompass TV and out-of-home as well as a broad line of merchandise, including a cow-of-the-month calendar. (In newer markets, the chain has been known to run the original ads that kicked off the cow-themed campaign 19 years ago.)

Popeyes is right on Chick-fil-A’s heels. With 1,721 locations in 47 states, it has run national TV spots since 2008. To solidify its brand position, the urban fried chicken-and-biscuits brand underwent a major makeover five years ago and became Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, adding a handful of Cajun-themed dishes. The restaurants are currently being remodeled so they are centered around a giant spice rack that represent all the spices that go into its New Orleans-style menu offerings. The redo was the brainchild of CEO Cheryl Bachelder, who joined Popeyes in 2007 after serving as president of KFC.

“Americans often associate Louisiana with good food, according to our research, so we decided to talk about our Louisiana heritage with gusto and specificity,” explains CMO Dick Lynch, a Bachelder hire. Advertising is anchored by a fictional character called Annie, a middle-age, African-American woman from Louisiana who likes to cook. Aside from promoting the chain’s latest special offer, Annie explains the nuances of Cajun cooking to audiences largely far removed from the Big Easy.

The company also runs a cooking program in New Orleans for its most successful franchise owners. The Louisiana Heritage Culinary Institute introduces the franchisees to Cajun and Creole dishes such as rice fritters and New Orleans barbecue shrimp. “We will always be Louisiana—we lean into it,” as Lynch puts it. “As we expand in both big cities and suburbs, we want to win people over to our culture.”

Whither KFC?
Despite its heady new status as the meat of choice, no one ever said selling chicken to the masses was easy. 

Photo: Michael Clinard

In the U.S., KFC outlets have struggled in recent years, as the company focused more on its breathtaking growth in China. Average U.S. sales per store in 2012 were an anemic $957,000—less than one-third that of Chick-fil-A and less than half that of Popeyes. Last year, sales at KFC tanked 6.7 percent, even as its rivals were cooking. “There is no fast fix for KFC,” David C. Novak, CEO of parent Yum Brands, told industry analysts last year. (Since then, food-safety issues put a damper on the chain’s expansion in China, and Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed was tapped to run Yum Brands, replacing Novak.)

In a stab at turning things around, the world’s most famous purveyor of fried chicken is getting creative—and in some cases, downright wacky. In October, it introduced the KFC Go Cup, fried chicken and fries served in a cup that fits in most car cup holders. More than 20 million were sold in the first three months, according to spokesman Rick Maynard. Other products are so over the top that they became instant catnip for social media—among them, the Double Down, a sandwich constructed of slabs of fried chicken substituting for bread, and a drumstick-festooned corsage just in time for prom season, which spawned a promotional video designed to build even more buzz. Meanwhile, KFC is attempting to reinforce its identity as “the brand that’s a family meal solution,” as Maynard puts it. To that end, the chain is kicking in a free chocolate chip cake with the purchase of every 10-piece chicken meal.

The biggest restaurant brand of them all, McDonald’s—which in the early ’80s made Chicken McNuggets a staple of the American fast-food diet—has had its own challenges when it comes to chicken. It had egg on its face this past February after the rollout of its Mighty Wings spicy fried chicken item, whose sales were so limp that the company got stuck with 10 million pounds of unsold wings, languishing in the freezer and speeding toward their expiration date. McDonald’s was forced to mark them down by 40 percent.  

Naturally, a marketer as savvy as McDonald’s doesn’t launch a new product without exhaustive research. As it happens, McDonald’s test marketing in the Chicago and Atlanta markets indicated that the chain had a major hit on its hands—overlooking the fact that wings happen to be disproportionately popular in those cities. In other towns, as it turns out, customers balked at the dollar-a-wing pricing, found the spices intimidating and were annoyed by the bones. The media had a field day over the rare McDonald’s flop. (What was lost in the reportage was that, while 10 million pounds may seem like a lot of bird, McDonald’s initially bought 50 million pounds of wings, selling 80 percent of the inventory at the premium price.)

Making People Fatter
Another key factor driving chicken’s rise is the perception that it is a healthier choice than beef—forget that much of that chicken comes battered and deep fried. “Fried chicken has more calories and fat than beef, and the shift from burgers to fried chicken won’t help our obesity problems,” says Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy. 

In fact, the growing popularity of chicken could make us even fatter. One need only compare a Burger King cheeseburger with a Popeyes fried chicken breast to find that the chicken boasts some 40 percent more calories and greater than twice the saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium of the burger.

Chick-fil-A’s new grilled menu offerings aside, the chicken chains could do a better job of making healthier choices available, as Harris sees it. “If these places really wanted to sell healthy chicken, grilled chicken would be priced better, any chicken sandwich would come with grilled chicken automatically unless people ask for fried, and the grilled items would be advertised more extensively than the fried variety. Plus, counter displays and menu designs would favor grilled over fried items,” she says. 

That said, our collective fingers will likely just get greasier.

Going back to the hamburger, it harkens back to a time when America and American tastes were more homogeneous, as analyst Gordon sees it. “Fast-food chains could serve [the same] mass-market items, such as burgers, to everyone,” he explains.

Chicken heralds not just a culinary but also a societal shift. “Our country is not so ‘mass’ anymore. We are broken into many social strata and different locales,” says the analyst, who declares that the rise of chicken—whether grilled or deep fried, in a bucket or on a bun—is no mere fad. “It reflects a fundamental change in our culture.” 

Bo Muller-Moore, the man behind a line of  “Eat More Kale” screen-printed shirts and bumper stickers, wanted to trademark his catchphrase to protect it from poaching. Chick-fil-A, however, considered itself poached.

Chick-fil-A, a fast food chain with over 1,800 locations in the U.S., sent its first cease-and-desist letter to Muller-Moore in 2006—but things heated up considerably when Muller-Moore applied for trademark protection in 2011, according to The Guardian. Another “aggressive” cease-and-desist letter was deployed shortly after. The letter, according to Forbes, claimed that “Eat More Kale” was too similar to Chick-fil-A’s slogan. The company’s claim noted Muller-Moore’s catchphrase “is likely to cause confusion of the public and dilutes the distinctiveness of Chick-fil-A’s intellectual property.”

The letter also highlighted 30 other businesses whose “Eat more” phrases had been successfully legally discouraged. Chick-fil-A’s trademarked slogan is “Eat Mor Chikin." Its ads feature the phrase in child-like writing supposedly written by cows, who evidently don't want to be killed and eaten, and point to chickens to take the fall.

After a three-year legal battle, during which Muller-Moore amassed more than 15,000 Facebook followers and over 42,000 signatures on an Change.org petition, the “eat more Kale guy” prevailed. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled to give “Eat More Kale” trademark protection. The victory is considered an important one for small business owners, the local food movement and even Vermont itself.

Vermont's governor Peter Shumlin and Muller-Moore held a joint press conference last Friday to discuss the win. “The message is out: Don’t mess with Vermont. And don’t mess with Bo,” Shumlin said. “In Vermont, we care about what’s in our food, who grows it, and where it comes from. That’s what Bo and Eat More Kale represent. And that’s something worth fighting for.”

Bo Muller-Moore put it bluntly: “I am now allowed to protect my simple, original art from copycat artists, and hopefully Chick-fil-A’s trademark bullying spree can come to an end. I hope mom-and-pop operations across the country will see this as a victory for all of us.”
 

We've reached peak brand inanity on Twitter, and it seems to have affected—or infected—almost every marketer trying to capitalize on the top trending hashtag "five-word deal breakers."

The social media elites at some of the nation's biggest brands are either out of ideas or just phoning it in today, because most of them are using the same joke to join the conversation. The common theme: if someone either hates or hogs all of a certain product, that's a dealbreaker. The hashtag started trending because of last night's @Midnight show, hosted by hero comic nerd Chris Hardwick.

The brand contribution is almost sad, because sometimes Twitter is an inspiring place, including marketing messages. Not today.

Not only are brands like Skittles and Chick-fil-A using the same joke, but it's also been done before with similar trending topics.

Even Señor Grandes Fresh Mexican Grill used the gag nearly two months ago when "five ways to ruin a date" trended. Its contribution was just what you'd expect: "I don't like Mexican food #5waystoruinadate." It wasn't funny then, and it's still not funny now. Not when Papa John's says it. Not when Pizza Hut says it. Not when Reese's says it. Not when Bass Pro Shops says it.

The joke was recycled when "good advice in four words" started trending today, too.

Some brands have found ways to jump into these trends without coming off hamfisted. State Farm, for instance, and its spokescharacter Jake, known for wearing khakis and a red polo, tweeted this:

#5WordDealBreakers We do not sell khakis. (Uhhhhh....Buh-bye then.)

— Jake from State Farm (@JakeStateFarm) March 11, 2015

Look for yourself and laugh—or don't—at the repetition among so many other tweets today:

I ate both of them #5WordDealBreakers

— REESE'S® (@ReesesPBCups) March 11, 2015

I took the last slice. #5WordDealBreakerspic.twitter.com/KEy6as2CxI

— Papa John's Pizza (@PapaJohns) March 11, 2015

"I think fishing is boring" #5WordDealBreakers

— Bass Pro Shops (@Bass_Pro_Shops) March 11, 2015

Let's just eat in tonight. #5WordDealBreakers

— Popeyes Chicken (@PopeyesChicken) March 11, 2015

I ate the last Nugget. #5WordDealBreakers

— Chick-fil-A, Inc. (@ChickfilA) March 11, 2015

"Skittles are okay, I guess." #5WordDealBreakers

— Skittles (@Skittles) March 11, 2015

I ate your fries, soz. #5WordDealBreakers

— McDonald's S. Africa (@McDonalds_SA) March 11, 2015

I actually prefer eating @marmite. #5WordDealBreakers@midnight

— Vegemite (@Vegemite) March 11, 2015

Go here right now. #GoodAdviceIn4Wordspic.twitter.com/xwpNXd46fE

— Arizona Iced Tea (@DrinkAriZona) March 11, 2015

Chick-fil-A has long savored its reputation for delicious chicken sandwiches and strongly held traditional values. 

But as the successful and growing fast-food chain's ambitions extend behind its Southern base, and as Americans, especially younger ones, grow increasingly liberal on social issues like same-sex marriage, Chick-fil-A executives are attempting to square their beliefs and their business goals—not always with success.

Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A stores are closed on Sunday in observation of the Christian Sabbath. And three years ago, CEO Dan Cathy—son of founder S. Truett Cathy—told the Baptist Press that he opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds, explaining that his company is "very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit." He added: "Our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do everything we can to strengthen families."

CEO Dan Cathy.

His comments sparked backlash among LGBT supporters, who staged a same-sex "kiss-in" at Chick-fil-A locations. Coming as it did during the 2012 Presidential Election, conservative politicians rallied behind the chain, with Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee declaring a "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day."

A new approach

Last year, Cathy acknowledged that linking his personal views to his business was a mistake. "Consumers want to do business with brands that they can interface with, that they can relate with," he said in a March 2014 interview. "And it's probably very wise from our standpoint to make sure that we present our brand in a compelling way that the consumer can relate to."

Nevertheless, Chick-fil-A has become a social touchpoint of sorts, with supporters of same-sex marriage rejecting it and conservative politicians embracing it. Earlier this month, a Fox News radio host dubbed Chick-fil-A "the official chicken of Jesus" during a broadcast condemning same-sex marriage.

That's not helpful as the chain prepares to expand into New York and other big cities.

But it also may be hurting the chain's potential business relationships. Chick-fil-A is currently reaching out to ad agencies with a creative assignment, and at least one agency passed on the potential business because of conflicting points of view.

"These guys are on the wrong side of history, and this is incredibly polarizing to a creatively driven company," an executive at one agency told Adweek, speaking on the condition that neither he nor his agency be identified. "Agencies are not going to want to be associated with companies that are super conservative on this particular issue at this particular time."

An exec at another agency, who also asked not to be named, said his shop passed on the opportunity due to a heavy workload but would have had similar concerns had it participated. "I have a feeling that had it gone on … that conversation would have come up," the exec said.

Distancing the brand from the man

This creative hunt is in its early stages, with agencies replying to a request for information from A Brand Apart, an Atlanta brand consultancy that's managing the process. The assignment is described as a one-off project, with the lead agency status of The Richards Group not at risk. Chick-fil-A spent about $52 million in media last year, up from $31 million in 2013, according to Kantar Media.

When asked about the agency rejection, a Chick-fil-A representative pointed to Cathy's mea culpa in 2014 and stressed that the brand is separate from the man, even if it's the man who runs the $5.7 billion company. "The Chick-fil-A brand is built on the principle that everyone deserves to be treated with respect," the chain's spokesperson said.

The representative also said that none of the agencies that declined to participate in the review cited philosophical differences.

Balancing politics with profits

In his public remarks, Cathy now focuses on Click-fil-A's customer service—in which it excels—not social issues, though he remains steadfast in his personal views.

Of course, he's not the only CEO to promote his personal views through his company. Liberal-minded CEOs like Howard Schultz at Starbucks and Jeff Bezos at Amazon have leaned into social issues with zeal, using their companies as media platforms in the process.

"Increasingly, the lines are blurred between corporations, brands, products, social responsibility, values and community engagement," said Lenny Stern, co-founder of SS+K, a New York creative agency with leaders who came out of political consulting. "And when those things blur and they connect, more and more it's not just the quality of the product, the style of the product or the service [that matters]. It's also, 'What does that brand stand for?'"

"That can be an ad agency or that can be a company," Stern added. "More and more employees want to go to places where the values reflect them. That's one. Two, more and more consumers are more comfortable associating with companies with values that reflect them but, perhaps even more so, are really uncomfortable about doing business with companies or products that reflect values that are inconsistent with theirs."

A similar issue has arisen in recent months for PR powerhouse Edelman, which reportedly lost several executives and potential clients due to its mixed message on climate change (which it has attempted to clarify).

Given such dynamics, Stern noted, companies are "less scared and perhaps more proactively [are] trying to send signals about the values they reflect."

Arby's brand president and marketing boss Rob Lynch realized shortly after joining the fast-food chain famous for those stacked-to-the-ceiling roast beef sandwiches that he had his work cut out for him. Standing at the counter of one of his restaurants one afternoon, Lynch recalls, he overheard a customer remark: "Arby's makes really big, meaty sandwiches—I wish they had a chicken sandwich." And yet right there on the menu board were four chicken sandwiches.

"We were hiding in plain sight," Lynch says of the 52-year-old, Atlanta-based company, which, after years of a brand identity crisis, a revolving door of ad agencies and slumping sales, has been busily remaking itself to appeal to a broader swath of consumers—notably younger ones, fast-food's core customers—while staying true to the founders' mission of offering fare that's unlike anything else out there. Lynch sized up his company's issues bluntly at the annual Association of National Advertisers' Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando last October. "Our customers were not loving Arby's for a very long time," he told the group. "We had lost about $150,000 in sales per restaurant over a four-year period, which for a brand of our size is essentially catastrophic."

Lynch with CEO Paul Brown at the new store in New York. Sasha Maslov

But since he came aboard in October 2013, Arby's, with 3,300 stores worldwide, has made a number of high-profile changes to its marketing recipe that have dramatically enhanced not only the look and taste of the brand but also its prospects. Right away, Lynch ordered an agency review, and just three months into his tenure, the company tapped a new creative agency, Publicis Groupe's Fallon, Minneapolis. The agency's CEO Mike Buchner commented at the time that he wanted to "get Arby's back into the conversation." That it did, launching Arby's "We Have the Meats" positioning and executing a brilliant promotion around Jon Stewart's retirement as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

Previously, the marketing message was scattershot. The chain's "Slicing Up Freshness" tag, created by its former agency, MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky, failed to move the needle. About Fallon, Lynch says, "We felt like they were going to be our partners in building something special."

Also under Lynch, Arby's would be responsible for one of the most talked-about marketing executions in recent years, when, on the night of the 2014 Grammy Awards, it tweeted about Pharrell Williams' hat and how much it looked like Arby's own brand icon—a message that got retweeted some 80,000 times and that generated 6,000 new followers for the brand.

Most importantly, the company that just a couple of years ago saw business stall has experienced a mighty turnaround, with same-store sales growing 9.6 percent in the third quarter of last year. (July and August were the best months in its history.) It was the 11th consecutive quarter the chain outperformed the quick-service restaurant category, per NPD Group.

Arby's is in good company—fast food is on a roll these days. Despite the trend toward healthier eating and a barrage of negative press concerning fast food's role in the obesity epidemic, sales for the three leading burger chains—McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King—were all up in 2015, with each poised to report stronger year-end earnings, according to analysts. While there was some initial grousing among franchisees, McDonald's all-day breakfast menu turned out to be a big hit with consumers—aiding a 3.5 percent uptick in same-store sales in the third quarter, its best showing in four years. More recently, McDonald's and Wendy's have been competing for price-conscious consumers by tweaking and promoting their dollar menus.

Arby's has been on a roll since Lynch came aboard. Sasha Maslov

Lynch was not unfamiliar with the plight of a fast-food brand in need of a refresh prior to joining Arby's. His previous job was as CMO of Yum Brands' Taco Bell, where he earned accolades for taking a chain that was hemorrhaging business and igniting consumer interest with innovations including the most successful launch in the company's history, Doritos Locos Tacos. (Last week, Taco Bell promoted chief brand engagement officer Marisa Thalberg to CMO, replacing Chris Brandt, who left the company. Earlier this month, Taco Bell, in a clever press release strewn with heavily redacted copy, promised to unveil "what could be its biggest food creation yet" in an ad by Deutsch LA during Super Bowl 50. Taco Bell returns to the game this year after three years of sitting out.)

"What I saw in [Lynch] was a person with a great marketing pedigree but also a real ability to think creatively about the business, because I believed very strongly that if Arby's was going to get where it needed to go, we had to think differently," says CEO Paul Brown, formerly a top executive with Hilton and Expedia who had been at Arby's just three months before he hired Lynch. "We could not do things the way that other companies in our space did things."

If you haven't been inside an Arby's lately, you probably wouldn't recognize the place. Last year, the company opened 60 new U.S. locations and remodeled 100 more to institute a look more aligned with that of a fast-casual restaurant like Panera Bread or Cosi than the typical fast-food outlet—a more stylish, upmarket feel, with lots of wood and subway-tiled walls and retro light fixtures. ("The menu is a great way to tell a story. The interior is a great way to reinforce the story," says Kate Edwards, a food industry consultant.) Hundreds more new and remodeled sites are set to open this year.

No doubt, Arby's highest-profile opening was this past December, in midtown Manhattan, a few steps from the heavily trafficked area around Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. It had been nearly a decade since the company had an outpost in New York.

Realizing that the way to the heart of a journalist is through his or her stomach, Arby's, just prior to the store's grand opening, rented a bus and took food writers on a "meat tour" of New York that included the legendary Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side and the Old Homestead Steakhouse. The tour ended at the new Arby's, where reporters and bloggers were served Smokehouse Turkey and Brisket Sandwiches and Corned Beef 'n Cheese Sliders. The sliders were an especially popular addition to the menu. Arby's introduced the mini sandwiches—made with one's choice of meat, including corned beef, ham or jalapeño roast beef—on Aug. 31 of last year. By the end of September, it had sold 29 million of them nationwide—equal to the weight, Arby's boasted, of five Statues of Liberty. Among other new items are the Mega Meat Stacks, Steak Fajita Flatbreads and Loaded Italian Sandwiches, plus a "loaded"—as in with cheese, bacon and ranch—version of its famous curly fries. Fish and Angus steak sandwiches, wraps and salads are also featured.

Arby's was not the only fast-food chain to make a splash by entering the New York market lately—the other being Chick-fil-A last October. (The store voluntarily shut its doors Dec. 30 after being cited by the New York City Department of Health for code violations—including the presence of fruit flies—but reopened Jan. 5.)

For Arby's, like any brand, setting up shop in the country's media capital has obvious benefits. But the chain might never have moved into the market had it not been for the taunts of a certain late-night television host.

Beginning around the time Lynch joined the company, Arby's, as luck would have it, became a favorite punch line of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Among his more pungent broadsides: "Arby's, the meat that is a dare for your colon." "It's like if a stomach could get punched in the balls." "Technically it's food."

Instead of getting its back up over the bewildering assault, Arby's and agency Fallon decided to play along. Every time the host would lob a verbal grenade, Arby's would send him and his staff lunch. Over time, Arby's would build a friendly relationship with the Daily Show staff, and when Stewart announced his retirement, Arby's gamely tweeted him a link to its job site. The following night, Stewart spent the first five minutes of his show talking about it, calling Arby's "a worthy adversary."

Then, when it came time for Stewart to sign off last October, Arby's and Fallon crafted a pair of farewell ads timed to his finale, including a 60-second integration—dubbed "Thank You for Being a Friend," set to the Andrew Gold tune and theme song of The Golden Girls—featuring some of the comic's more brutal barbs. ("Not sure why," went the kicker, "but we'll miss you.") Stewart introduced the piece—as Lynch and Brown both sat in the studio audience, right on the front row.

"We truly believe that people were getting the joke, and they did," recalls Lynch. "Almost zero negative conversation about that. So that to me is indicative of a brand that knows who it is, knows who its customers are, knows what kind of relationship we have with our customers and are willing to take chances."

Lynch notes that the back-and-forth with Stewart even contributed to Arby's decision to enter New York. "We feel like this is a place where there's an energy and a vibrancy, and we want to be a part of that, and we want our brand to be a part of that," he says.

Opening a Manhattan location and trading cracks with a late-night host are certainly a long way from Arby's roots. When Leroy and Forrest Raffel—aka the Raffel brothers, or "R.B.," hence "Arby's"—opened their first restaurant in Boardman, Ohio, in the summer of 1964, it served roast beef sandwiches (for 69 cents apiece), potato chips (those distinctive curly fries wouldn't come until 1988), the soon-to-become-legend Jamocha Shake and Texas-size iced tea—a radical menu at a time when burgers were pretty much the only fast-food fare.

But there was another difference.

"Their vision," says Lynch, "was to deliver a higher-quality product that they could charge a little more for, and differentiate from the rest of the industry."

Half a century later, and that differentiation has Arby's back in prime form.

This story first appeared in the Jan. 18 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Joe Saracino, who was promoted from CMO to president of Erwin Penland in November, announced today that he will resign to accept a top marketing job at Chick-fil-A, which is also an Erwin Penland client.

Karen Kaplan, CEO of sister shop Hill Holliday, told staffers this afternoon that chief operating officer Allen Bosworth and chief creative officer Con Williamson will replace Saracino by jointly filling the roles of co-president, effective immediately. They will also retain their current titles, so Bosworth will be president and COO, and Williamson will be president and CCO.

Saracino's specific title at Chick-fil-A is not yet clear, but he will report directly to the chain's chief marketing officer, Jon Bridges.

"While all of us are sad to see Joe go, Erwin Penland has a great leadership team in place, a strong bench, and phenomenal new business momentum," Kaplan said in a statement. "I'm confident that Allen and Con are the right people to harness the talent of our team and steer our ship. Both Allen and Con have more than proven themselves. Allen helped build the agency from the ground up over the last 28 years. Con has played an instrumental role in both advancing the agency's creative product, and jumpstarting client growth at the agency since joining two years ago."

Saracino spent more than a decade in the marketing department of telecom giant Verizon before joining Erwin Penland. At the time, Verizon was one of the agency's largest clients, but the company ended its relationship with the IPG agency late last year amid an ongoing round of consolidations.

Soon afterward, co-founder and president Joe Erwin announced he would be retiring after three decades in advertising and handing his agency's reins to Saracino.

Erwin Penland does not plan to hire a new president; the organization believes Williamson and Bosworth will sufficiently handle Saracino's responsibilities.

Since sparking controversy in 2012, the now-former president's new employer, Chick-fil-A, has attempted to move beyond the personal politics of its chief operating officer, Dan Kathy, a religious conservative who opposes same-sex marriage. Less than a month ago, it reopened its first New York location after city officials cited the chain for various health code violations.

No one likes trying to have a dinner conversation with someone who's distracted by a screen. But other people get just as annoyed if they're asked to put their phone away when an "important" call or text might come through. 

It's one of the great social tensions of our time, and marketers seem to be picking a side. 

One Chick-fil-A franchise owner has gotten some buzz for creating a "cell phone coop"—a box in which customers are challenged to leave their (silenced) smartphones for the duration of the meal. If they make it to the end, they get a free small ice cream cone.

Restaurant owner Brad Williams, who has two Chick-fil-A locations in Georgia, says he was inspired to create the box after seeing a mother spend an entire meal looking at her phone instead of talking to her kids. Williams tells Good Morning America that nearly 200 Chick-fil-A operators are using the idea in their restaurants.



"It just got me thinking how to get people to disconnect in order to connect," he said. "Be present where your feet are."

In the same vein, Isobar Poland and its sister agencies in the Dentsu Aegis network have created a "MasterCard Capsule" that holds your smartphone throughout a meal at three Warsaw restaurants. Participants win prizes for joining in, and the value of the prize increases with each minute you're willing to go phoneless. 

"MasterCard Capsule can be used by two to eight people at the same time," Isobar said. "Anyone interested in taking part in the campaign will be asked to place their phones in the capsule. The device is equipped with sensors that monitor the presence of phones inside. The game is over when the capsule is opened. For those who might have gotten out of the habit of having conversations and being focused on the other person, we will have special cards with inspiring sample topics of conversations from a variety of categories."

Here's a video selling the idea to locals:



We asked Adweek's Twitter followers what they think of this trend of businesses encouraging conversation over connectivity. Here are a few of the responses we got:

How do you feel about brands offering rewards (free ice cream at Chic-fil-A, etc.) for putting away your smartphone during meals?

— Adweek (@Adweek) March 2, 2016

@Adweek You had me at free.

— Lauren Edmonds (@lalaedmonds) March 2, 2016

@Adweek Adding value and jumping into a relevant conversation. I think it makes sense, and who doesn't like free stuff?

— Alex Silberman (@asilbs) March 2, 2016

@Adweek Love it. Going to try the same tactic with my kids

— Michael McSunas (@AdLawGuy) March 2, 2016

@Adweek Great idea,interested to see how many people turn to social media after their free cone to tell their friends about it. Oh the irony

— Adam E (@AceManInFL) March 2, 2016

Stan Richards, founder and creative director of ad agency The Richards Group, was sitting in a routine staff meeting in 1994 when he learned his agency won the Chick-fil-A account. He didn't find out in an email. No phone call came in breaking the good news. Instead, David Salyers—then vp of national and regional marketing at Chick-fil-A—ventured from Atlanta to the agency's Dallas headquarters on a whim.

Salyers arrived, unannounced, and boldly walked into the meeting. He stopped whatever conversation was taking place and shook Richards' hand. "We want you to be our new agency," he said with a smile.

In that moment, Salyers made a promise to Richards that the agency said still rings true today: "We will never be your biggest client, but we will do everything we can do to be your best client."

And, Richards tells Adweek, "that's exactly what they've done over all those years."

The underdog chicken

In the early '90s, Chick-fil-A was primarily known for being a mall-based fast-food chain, but beginning in 1994, the chain started slowly shifting its focus to freestanding units. With that shift came a new batch of competitors—big burger joints.

These chains spent more in one week on their advertising than Chick-fil-A could afford to spend in a year. Plus, the chicken chain was already at a competitive disadvantage due to its stance on all locations being closed Sundays.

The brand needed an agency that could work with its budget to create stop-you-in-your-tracks advertising campaigns and encourage more people to choose Chick-fil-A over "the other guys."

The catch? With its advertising budget constraints, Chick-fil-A couldn't afford to spend the money on a TV campaign and instead was set on relying heavily on three-dimensional billboards, something that was nearly unheard of in the advertising world then.

"At the time, a billboard campaign was extraordinarily revolutionary because conventional wisdom was billboards tell you what exit to take," The Richards Group's Rob VanGorden, a principal on the Chick-fil-A account, tells Adweek. "You don't build a brand on billboards."

The brand also suffered from what VanGorden calls "extreme back-of-mind awareness." In focus groups, the agency found that when it asked participants about their favorite fast-food chains, a Chick-fil-A mention was rare. It was only when the agency gave participants a nudge that "it brought back all the emotions of what a great place Chick-fil-A was," VanGorden recalls.

In order to get through to its desired consumers and boost awareness for the chain, The Richards Group needed a simple, visual idea that would stand out on crowded highways. So, where to begin?

Waiting for the right sign

The road to the perfect billboard—and the birth of the cow campaign—was bumpy. VanGorden credits Chick-fil-A for the client's trust and extreme patience throughout the process as the agency delivered a few "foul balls" before getting it right.

Created in 1994, the first attempt featured an image of a rubber chicken on a Dallas billboard—no logo, no tagline, just a lonesome rubber chicken. The idea was intriguing and garnered some buzz on local radio stations, but the billboard needed more substance if morning commuters were going to understand with just a glance what was being advertised.

Next, the agency slapped the Chick-fil-A logo in the bottom right corner and added the tagline, "If it's not Chick-fil-A, it's a joke," beneath the rubber chicken. It was a step closer. "A fine billboard," according to VanGorden, but the agency still hadn't managed to deliver a 3-D idea to the client. "It accomplished the mission of stopping people and making people notice, but it didn't really say the things about our brand that we wanted it to say. It didn't differentiate us in any way."

The team's next iteration, the "Double Drive-Thru" ad showing two cars that seemed to have crashed into the billboard, finally managed to incorporate some depth. Even the president of Coca-Cola at the time loved the idea, calling up the Chick-fil-A team to compliment them on the clever ad. However, the car billboard was focused solely on "product attributes." It still wasn't quite what the agency or the client was looking for.   

Birth of the cows

Feeling somewhat lost in a sea of semisuccessful billboards, The Richards Group was still hunting for that big idea. The team's next attempt came one step closer, with the inspiration coming from an unlikely place—Bart Simpson.

At the time, one of Bart's most noteworthy taglines, "Don't have a cow, man!," was seeping into pop culture. It was the perfect tagline for a company selling chicken products, so the creative team borrowed it, using the line, "Don't have a cow," on a billboard next to a picture of the classic chicken sandwich. The idea was there, but again, there was no 3-D component, and the product shot wasn't what the brand wanted.

"In the QSR category, we live in a sea of sameness, and most of our competition, they're selling a product at a price point," VanGorden says.

Drive down the highway and you're likely to see a handful of billboards for fast-food chains that feature massive burgers topped with bacon and cheese or a selection of refreshing smoothies or blended beverages, all with a low price slapped next to the product to seduce hungry drivers. If Chick-fil-A was going to stand out and steal away some of the big burger chains' customers, it needed to go bigger.

Then one day, an art director on the Chick-fil-A account was driving down a Dallas highway, on his way home for lunch and a little hungry, when a billboard caught his eye. It wasn't the subject of the billboard that intrigued him but rather the people pasting up a new ad.

What would happen if the team of workers up on that billboard decided to take a lunch break midway through the task, leaving the ad unfinished? That would be kind of clever, he thought. The team took that idea and ran with it.

For its next billboard, The Richards Group put up another product shot, but the right side of the billboard was still painted white. Atop the white space, the team scrawled a note: "Boss, got hungry, back soon," with a yellow ladder posted up beneath the note. It was witty and eye catching, a good move, but there was still something missing. A bigger, better idea was out there.

Thinking back to the "Don't Have a Cow" idea, a big hit with the client, creatives from the agency started thinking of ways to fuse the idea of not having a cow with the clever tone of the most recent billboard.

That got the team thinking. Who else doesn't want people to have a cow?

Suddenly, it clicked.

Cows. Cows don't want people to eat them.

They want to keep on living, grazing and enjoying their cow lives. So why not use cows to tell the brand's story? Put a couple of cows on a billboard and have them plead with burger fans not to eat them.

And what if the cows were the three-dimensional part of the ads? They could be up there on the billboard ledges painting the messages themselves. Don't eat cows, they would plead. Eat more chicken.

And thus, the cows were born.

From humble herd to creative stampede

The idea was perfect. Fans of the chicken chain fell in love from the moment they saw that first cow duo painting its first sign—"Eat Mor Chickin," it read—in 1995. No other fast-food chain had created anything remotely similar. Everything was big budget TV spots, product shots on top of product shots and run-of-the-mill, cowless billboards.   

After striking gold with the first 3-D cow billboard, The Richards Group now had a new challenge on its hands: where to take the cows from here? How long would the idea of cows telling humans not to eat them capture the hearts, minds and stomachs of chicken lovers everywhere? The answer, as it turns out, was more than 20 years—and counting.

Following the success of the initial "Eat Mor Chikin" billboard, the agency continued to find new and charming ways to introduce the cows to the world and build up their fan base. Cow creative has been plentiful over the years, from political cows around election time to to holiday cows asking Santa not to drop gifts off for beef eaters.

Soon the cows found themselves on more than just billboards. In 2006, they made their debut in the Houston Astros' stadium. The brand secured prime real estate in Minute Maid Park: the foul polls, which the creative team renamed "fowl poles" and put baseball cap-wearing cows on top with the words "Eat Mor Fowl" on the side. 

The fresh ideas never seem to run out. Richards estimates that for every winning idea the creative team comes up with, it discards roughly 10. It might be challenging to keep the cows in the spotlight, but the team continues to succeed.

"The whole idea is we need to keep it fresh. We need to make sure that every time somebody is exposed to the cows—whether it be in outdoor, television, wherever it happens to be—that there is something that the consumer is seeing that he or she hasn't seen before," Richards said.

The power of the cows has been proven in Chick-fil-A sales results, too.

While Chick-fil-A eventually expanded its marketing efforts, the initial billboard-focused effort helped the brand take on its biggest competitors. In 2012, Chick-fil-A scored the title of No. 1 fast-food chain in terms of sales per store, reaching $3.1 million per location. One year later, Chick-fil-A surpassed KFC in sales, despite having a smaller ad budget and closing on Sundays.

Over the years, the outdoor work has also garnered plenty of recognition within the ad industry, winning everything from a silver Lion at Cannes to a silver Effie award in 2009 for "sustained success." In 2006, the OBIE awards inducted the cows into its hall of fame. The following year, the cows made it into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame. 

A multi-moodia empire

The cow campaign has sustained itself for more than 20 years, and as it has continued to grow and become more popular with Chick-fil-A fans, the brand has expanded its marketing plan, too. In 1997 the cows came out with their first TV commercial, and the brand continues to push out TV spots from time to time.

In 1998, Chick-fil-A released its first cow calendar—which includes great cow creative as well as one promotional deal per month—and has released one each year ever since. At first, the Chick-fil-A team considered a calendar filled with product shots—January, a chicken sandwich; February, a chicken sandwich; every month, a chicken sandwich. But how many chicken sandwiches can consumers really look at? The cows were already a proven hit on billboards, TV and radio, so why not put them in one more place and give consumers a chance to bring the cows into their homes and offices?

Each year, the team picks a theme for the calendar and adds a cow spin to it. The 2012 calendar focused on historical trail blazers but called it "Trail Grazers." Ferdinand Magellan becomes Herdinan Moogellan. Louis and Clark become Loin and Clark, and Cleopatra transforms into Cleopatty. "[The calendars] are a great palette for cow creative," VanGorden says. The calendar has even sold more copies in some years than the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar.

The future of cows

The billboards are still an integral part of Chick-fil-A's campaigns, and they don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. But because the campaign was created in a time that predates social media, the cow campaign eventually needed to adapt. Rather than simply creating only brand accounts, The Richards Group helped craft a Facebook page and Twitter account just for the cows. On the different platforms, the cows manage to keep their sense of humor with all types of content from memes to short videos. 

So, what makes the campaign and the cows so successful after all these years?

"There is something uniquely human about self-preservation. It's innate, the desire to preserve oneself," VanGorden says. "The cows are a great story, and what makes a story interesting is conflict. Within a story, when the conflict is resolved, the story is over. With the cows, the conflict is never resolved. People root for the low-status character, and the cows are low status. They're the underdog." 

Fast-food chain Chick-fil-A has dropped The Richards Group as its longtime creative agency of record after 22 years in favor of a multi-agency roster including McCann Worldgroup and Erich & Kallman, an independent shop recently launched by veterans of Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Chick-fil-A representatives did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Sources tell Adweek that agency founder Stan Richards made the announcement in an all-staff meeting this morning.

"After 22 years of partnership of course we are sad to say goodbye, but we have a lot to be proud of," Richards said in a statement. "We never would have guessed that Chick-fil-A would pass KFC as the No. 1 chicken chain in the country. ... That's something both Chick-fil-A and The Richards Group did together."

"When Steve Robinson retired as the only CMO we had ever worked with, and then David Salyers was replaced as vice president, we had a sense things would go in a different direction," Richards continued. "That said, we believe that brand is a promise. It's not a logo, a founder, a CMO, or an ad agency. It should be bigger than all of that. This is a brand we love. And have loved for a very long time. We will continue to love it long after its stewardship has left this building."

"This is a great opportunity and a very exciting time to be working with Chick-Fil-A as they grow and expand their business nationwide," said McCann North America president Chris Macdonald. McCann New York will be the lead agency on brand strategy across the Chick-fil-A business moving forward.

Erich & Kallman also won project-based work for the brand in a six-agency pitch. Its first work for Chick-fil-A debuts today and highlights the chain's new Egg White Grill breakfast sandwich, marking the chain's first departure from its signature cow campaign in more than two decades. Agency co-founder and creative director Eric Kallman says, "The campaign is a really fun way to go right at the inherent tension, as choosing chicken for breakfast isn't an obvious option to many right now."

The ads star a series of historical figures, with the first focusing on Beethoven.

Additional spots feature such famous names as Amelia Earhart, Susan B. Anthony, Michelangelo and Alexander Graham Bell.

Chick-fil-A hired The Richards Group in 1994 to help the brand compete with big burger chains. The challenge presented to the agency at the time was to make an eye-catching campaign without spending the hefty budget that most of the brand's competitors had access to. Chick-fil-A also wanted the agency to use billboards that featured some sort of three-dimensional component as the cornerstone of its advertising.

After working through its first iterations of 3D billboards that featured product shots, The Richards Group finally debuted its first cow-focused work in 1995, starring two 3D cows—one sitting on top of the other—painting "Eat Mor Chikin" for the world to see.

Throughout the 22-year relationship, The Richards Group continued developing cow billboard creative for every occasion, from holidays to political events, eventually expanding into television in 1997. Together, the two companies continued to build out the cow empire with a line of cow calendars, which debuted in 1998, and its massively popular cow-focused social media accounts, including a Facebook page with over 700,000 followers.

The Richards Group's Rob VanGroden, a principal on the Chick-fil-A account, previously told Adweek that the key to the success of the campaign rested on the cows themselves. "The cows are a great story, and what makes a story interesting is conflict. Within a story, when the conflict is resolved, the story is over. With the cows, the conflict is never resolved. People root for the low-status character, and the cows are low status. They're the underdog."

Regarding the cows, Richards said today, "The cows are core to the brand's success and certainly we are protective of them—we think we know them pretty well having given birth to and nurtured their unique personalities for more than two decades. We hope the cows live on and continue to thrive with a new family."

Chick-fil-A spent approximately $14 million on measured media in the first quarter of 2016 according to numbers provided by Kantar Media.