Underrated aspect of living in Atlanta? Getting to see new Chick-Fil-A billboards driving down the highway everyday. When I see a new one I get as excited as Homer Simpson.
Seriously – the people at Chick-Fil-A aren’t just experts in deliciously addictive food. They’re also masterful marketers.
In 1995, Chick-Fil-A launched their definitive and often hilarious “Eat Mor Chikin” campaign. Surely you know the premise well by now: a group of cows band together to show off their talents (excluding spelling) to prove how they can be more than just food, imploring customers to eat chicken sandwiches instead of burgers.
How effective are the cows in marketing chicken nuggets?
The billboards in Atlanta featuring the cows don’t even mention the name Chick-Fil-A. Yet everyone driving by knows exactly what the billboard is advertising. That’s pretty incredible and effective marketing in my opinion. Chick-Fil-A has been using the cows as pitchmen for 20 years now.
The persistence has paid off. The cows are so synonymous with the brand that you don’t even have to mention the company itself in the ad.
Besides the cows, another thing people associate with Chick-Fil-A is Christianity. The business is heavily influenced by founder Truett Cathy’s strong faith.
A lot of pastors like to point to Chick-Fil-A’s business model in sermon illustrations as a way to talk about loving and serving others. I think there’s another way we can learn from this fast-feeder.
I think as Christians our goal should be to reach the same level of effectiveness in our marketing as Chick-Fil-A.
A lot of people think Christians should be extremely aggressive in their marketing. Want proof? Just look at the T-Shirt racks at Christian bookstores filled with cheesy puns parodying popular culture and inserting a Jesus reference.
What if instead Christians advertised their faith so effectively that we didn’t even have to wear Jesus’s name on our t-shirts? What if the way we lived our lives could be as synonymous with the love of Christ as cows are with Chick-Fil-A?
Your life is an advertisement.
There’s no getting around it. The way you live is representative of someone or something.
As a youth pastor, one of the lessons I tried to impart on students was to remember that people are always watching you. You may not want to believe this, but think about it: aren’t you always watching the people around you?
Consciously or not, you take notice of the actions of your peers. That means they’re doing it to you as well. Like it or not, there’s no slipping through this life unnoticed. Whether at work or school or home your life is an advertisement.
The question then is what will you be an advertisement for?
I truly believe it’s our duty as believers to proclaim the name of Christ in all that way do. Often times that means being explicit and intentional about using Jesus’s name.
I also believe we can’t just rely on stamping Jesus’s name on a t-shirt as our sole form of marketing. Our lives should become so synonymous with our faith that people recognize His presence in everything we do even when we don’t label it.
So as people drive by the billboard of your life today, ask yourself this: Will you be content with advertising your faith by wearing Jesus’s name on a t-shirt? Or will you take a page from Chick-Fil-A’s playbook and let your life become so synonymous with the One you represent that His presence is always evident even when you don’t make it obvious?
For more lessons from the world of advertising, check out these posts:
POP GOD 