02 chick-fil-a – Doug Rucker

Chick-fil-a

the story of the vigilante cows

I led the Chick-fil-A brand for 9 years. A bright, young AD in my group, David Ring (still bright, but older), shared a billboard idea for an upcoming client meeting. It had a comic illustration of cows to the left holding a paintbrush and, “EAT MOR CHIKIN” scrawled to the right. I immediately recognized a great idea, but thought something was missing. I suggested replacing the flat illustration with 3D cows made from plaster to make them seem all the more real. Once the campaign got underway, I started running the Chick-fil-A creative group like a primetime sitcom writers’ room, in which we pitched headlines, radio and TV ideas around a table. We had a lot of laughs and those are still many of my favorite memories to this day. Best. Clients. Ever.

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Part of the campaign’s broad appeal was this whimsical notion: While humans slept at night, renegade cows snuck off the farm, climbed a ladder to paint messages of self preservation on billboards and then scrambled down the ladder and back to the barn. Ridiculous? Yes. But not as ridiculous as cows making their own television ads.