From the Heart. For the Heart. by Caroline Daniels

FROM THE HEART. FOR THE HEART.

CAMPAIGN BOOK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

4-------------SITUATION ANALYSIS 14-----------CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 23-----------------CREATIVE BRIEF 33---------------------MEDIA PLAN 44--------------------------PR PLAN 55------------------------APPENDIX

WHO WE ARE Bascom Media is a Madison-based strategic communications firm founded in 2018. Our company emphasizes research, innovation and creativity as the driving forces behind a successful campaign. We consider each clients’ individual goals and we dedicate our full attention to every campaign we take on. Our team of experts holds the client’s feedback at a high regard, and we recognize the value of building a relationship with companies we work with. Bascom Media is home to a diverse group of departments which range from research to creative planning to post-campaign analysis.

Brett Mower Research Director

Stephanie Wolf Account Director

Caroline Daniels Creative Director

Sammy Goodman Creative Director

Colleen Muraca PR Director

Mara Nasui PR Director

Maggie Kmiecik Media Director

SITUATION ANALYSIS

Company's History

The first Chick-Fil-A was established in Atlanta, GA by Samuel Cathy in 1967. Cathy founded ChickFil-A after his first restaurant in 1946 was a success, this restaurant would later become a Chick-Fil-A as well. Cathy continued to expand by opening new franchises in different malls and supermarkets over the next 20 years, but would not open the first stand-alone franchise until 1986. In 2014 Chick-Fil-A opened its first ever franchise outside of the United States, the franchise is located in Alberta, Canada.

the first chick-fil-a that opened in 1967.

Since its inception, Chick-Fil-A has been a family owned company, and is currently owned by second and third generation owners of the Cathy family. Throughout ChickFil-A’s lifespan, both its management and brand have exuded traditional family values such as closing all franchises across the nation every Sunday.

CHICK-FIL-A FOUNDER, SAMUEL CATHY.

The company has received strong backlash for some of these values, most notably in 2012 when now CEO Dan Cathy made comments expressing that both Chick-Fil-A and its management support only a traditional definition of marriage. After the controversy reached national attention Chick-Fil-A announced that they would be cutting back donations to groups that opposed same-sex marriage. In 2014 Dany Cathy expressed regret for the results of his comments.

It is important to distinguish that Cathy regretted the consequences of his comments, rather than regretting the substance of his comments (Rhodan). During 2017 Chick-Fil-A demonstrated an increased intent to remain separate from politics by altering its company policy to stay completely removed from anything that could “blur the line” into politics (Peterson).

Industry Trends

Chick-Fil-A lies within the fast-food market, which is a mature and stable industry that has exhibited consistent growth over the last decade. Competition within the fast-food market is considered to have relatively low concentration, with almost half of the establishments in the fast-food market being owned by small-business owners instead of corporations (Brown). Despite low concentration, multi-franchise chains comprise 65% of total industry revenue (Brown). It is important to note that many franchises in the industry must also compete with establishments that don’t fall into the category of fast-food, such as grocery stores and convenience stores. Within the industry Chick-Fil-A is currently thriving, and has highest earnings per restaurant of any fast-food chain in the nation while still only opening six days a week.

CHICK-FIL-A SIGN.

The fast-food market is currently experiencing a growing demand for “fast casual” restaurants that omit traditional table-service, but maintain a quality of food higher than that of normal fast-food chains such as McDonald’s. In addition to this, the fast-food industry is also experiencing a surge in demand for healthy menu items (CBS News). Chicken is currently considered one of the healthiest sources of meat/protein, especially compared to beef and pork.

Even with the growing demand for healthy options on menus the fast-food industry is also experiencing a growing demand for breakfast food options, which is something Chick-Fil-A has made an important cornerstone of their menu. Much of Chick-Fil-A’s competition, such as McDonald’s, have introduced a 24 hour breakfast menu to accommodate growing demand in recent years, but as of 2018 Chick-Fil-A’s breakfast menu continues to operate on a schedule that tends to start around 6:30 a.m. and end at roughly 10:30 a.m.

Consumer Analysis We’ve used data from the Simmons OneView Database to gain crucial information about the average customer that had reported eating Chick-Fil-A at least once in the last 30 days. We found that a majority of Chick-Fil-A’s customers tend to be female (55.3%), but it is important to note that males tend to spend more per visit to Chick-Fil-A. As the amount of fast food consumed in the United States has increased over the past 20 years, so has the gap between how much money males spend on fast food per visit compared to females (Persaud). For example, among consumers who reported eating at Chick-Fil-A at least once in the past 30 days only 36% of people who spent less than $50 identified as male. There tends to be a relatively even distribution between age groups of customers, but the largest age demographics for both men and women are 20-24 and 30-34, with a majority of the 30-34 consumers also being married. It is critical to understand that even though 20-24 and 30-34 demographics are about the same size overall, it is more likely that high frequency consumers fall into the 20-24 age demographic. Almost 75% of customers in the last month reported being employed full or part time, and 68% stated that they make an average income of at least $50,000 per year.

Male 45% Female 55%

45% of consumers reported having at least one child, and 59% of consumer reported being currently married. Although Chick-Fil-A has shifted their policy away from political involvement, it is important to note a tendency of customers having at least a somewhat conservative outlook on politics. 85% of customers noted that they were social media users, 55% of Chick-Fil-A customers said they check social media at least once a week. Customers of the fast-food industry as a whole reported two of their biggest priorities to be wait-time and options for healthy eating. A critical distinction between Chick-Fil-A’s two largest consumer age demographics, millennials and early/mid 30’s consumers, is that millennials are far more likely to be repeat customers. Thus, a consumer who has eaten at Chick-Fil-A more than twice in the past month is most likely to be a millenial, and this likelihood continues to increase when number of visits increases. 7

In addition to the data collected through research with Simmons Oneview database, Bascom Media has also conducted primary research through the use of surveys distributed online. The purpose of these surveys were to provide more insight into targetconsumer opinions on the behavior of corporate social media accounts. In this survey we presented multiple questions where our participants were asked to asked to express the likelihood of following a corporate social media account based on the primary content of the account.

Q: How likely are you to follow a corporation's social media account if the majority of its content is funny and humor-based? 100

55 -6 4

45 -5 4

35 -4 4

25 -3 4

18 -2 4

U nd er

Chart displays participants who selected slightly likely, moderately likely, and extremely likely.

The results of our survey displayed a statistically significant trend in millennial consumers, specifically that millennials are considerably more likely to follow a corporate social media account if the majority of account’s content is targeted at the consumers emotions, as opposed to targeting a consumers pragmatism and potential utility of a product. Millennials displayed this trend the most when demonstrating their increased likelihood to follow a social media account if the majority of its content is humorous. The second strongest theme of a corporate account was one focused on wholesome and heartwarming content, while millennial consumers displayed a notable disinterest in accounts that primarily focused on explaining unique product features and traits.

With this information we can start to construct consumer profiles of what some of Chick-Fil-A’s average customer base looks like. For example, a likely Chick-Fil-A customer could be a female in her early 30’s. The customer would be very likely to be employed and probably fall into the category of middle-class. We establish a more indepth look at potential consumer profiles through the use of psychographics, which are located in the Campaign Strategy section.

Brand Analysis Chick-Fil-A has established itself as a traditional and family-oriented company, in part because of being family owned for over 40 years. This has been furthered by their well known trend of closing every Sunday as a religious observance, which further ties into their brand of adhering to Christian values. The company is also well known for the politeness of server staff, with employees being trained to use phrases such as “you’re welcome” and “my pleasure” whenever possible. The crux of Chick-Fil-A’s advertising has revolved around their “Eat Mor Chikin” cow mascots, which began in 1995. Throughout this campaign, Chick-Fil-A has placed a group of cows in different humorous settings while having them hold signs that crudely display “Eat Mor Chikin.” This campaign has been very well received, and allowed Chick-Fil-A to branch out into spinoffs such as “Cow Appreciation Day”, as well as a yearly Chick-Fil-A cow calendar. In addition to the cow campaign Chick-Fil-A has established themselves as a restaurant for football fans, and routinely partners with the Peach Bowl to help promote this. Chick-Fil-A is not the only fast-food corporation involved in college football sponsorship, other fast food companies heavily involved in college football include Burger King, Wendy’s and Hardee’s. Although its menu has continued to change over time, Chick-Fil-A has always maintained a strong menu focus on chicken and breakfast food items. Chick-Fil-A has recently displayed an increased focus on providing healthy options to consumers, such as their newly introduced egg white grill. Furthermore, Chick-Fil-A has demonstrated an effort to increase the quality of their products through a newly introduced “No Antibiotics Ever” campaign, but this campaign has not been emphasised as much as more well-known Chick-Fil-A campaigns. In very recent years Chick-Fil-A has also overtaken Kentucky Fried Chicken as the most popular chicken restaurant in the United States. Because the company is privately-owned it is difficult to provide in-depth information about sales. One of Chick-Fil-A’s biggest rivals is Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC is very well known for their iconic bucket meals, and until recent years KFC has heavily pushed their well known slogan “It’s finger lickin’ good!” In addition, KFC’s mascot and founder Col. Sanders is easily recognized, and has been played by numerous different actors and comedians over the last three years since being reintroduced in 2015. In contrast with Chick-Fil-A, Kentucky Fried Chicken does no have a strong reputation as a “family values” brand and has refrained from taking any form of political stance on potentially controversial issues. 9

Another chicken-based rival of Chick-Fil-A is Popeyes, which is popular not just for their chicken menu options but also their unique selection of seafood. Popeyes still places the majority of its brand focus on its chicken, and uses the slogan “Love that chicken.” Unlike Chick-Fil-A or KFC, Popeyes purposefully incorporates a lot of the cultural heritage into their brand, specifically the heritage of New Orleans, LA.

Media Usage Analysis Chick-Fil-A has used numerous advertising mediums throughout its cow campaign, with the very first ad the cows ever appeared on being a 3D billboard in 1995. Since then the Chick-Fil-A cows have appeared in radio, television, and digital advertisements. In more recent years Chick-Fil-A has established a strong online following through social media, and are active multiple times per day on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. ChickFil-A’s social media accounts tend to utilize the cow campaign less than Chick-Fil-A’s traditional billboard and television advertisements, especially on Facebook. Chick-Fil-A tends to target a younger demographic of consumers on Twitter, and places an emphasis on their breakfast food and a wholesome family feel. In addition to their normal twitter account, Chick-Fil-A also has a second Twitter account dedicated to their “Eat Mor Chikin” cows. Posts for the cows’ Twitter account tend to be more humorous than the posts made by Chick-Fil-A’s official account. On Instagram, Chick-Fil-A tends to target an audience of millenials, and often post appealing pictures of different menu items. Both Twitter and Instagram have official Chick-Fil-A cow campaign the "Eat Mor Chikin" Billboard. accounts, but both accounts have displayed a decline in activity over the last two years. This decline in cow campaign social media accounts can be viewed as an indicator of Chick-Fil-A slowly phasing out portions of their cow advertisement campaign in favor of fresher creative material that resonates more closely with their target-audience. 10

Category Creative Analysis Since the 1990’s Chick-Fil-A’s advertisement campaigns have been outsourced to an advertisement agency in Dallas, Texas named The Richards Group. This company was hired to create a budget-friendly campaign for Chick-Fil-A, and came up with the cow campaign. Not only did this campaign receive a very positive reception, it also established Chick-Fil-A as a company whose advertisements tend to be light-hearted, funny, and able to appeal to consumers spanning numerous demographics. One of Chick-Fil-A’s most successful commercials of all time was their “Parachuting Cows” advertisement. It was a television commercial that featured three cows parachuting into a football stadium in the middle of a game. As the cows interrupt the game one of them lands on a hamburger salesman, and it is then revealed that all three cows have “Eat Mor Chikin” written on the top of their parachutes. The commercial ends with an overhead shot of “Eat Mor Chikin” written on the parachutes being displayed, as well as the Chick-Fil-A logo appearing prominently in the lower-center of the television screen. In addition to Chick-Fil-A’s classic cow commercials, the company has also started a new and much smaller line of advertisements that debuted in fall of 2017. These advertisements highlight different parts of the culture of college football games and have a noticeably different tone compared to their usual advertisements. A common theme shared between all of these advertisements is a sense of unity between football fans despite these fans possibly cheering for opposing teams. All of the commercials close out the same way, with a white screen and red text that expresses, “Game day wouldn’t be the same without each other.” The creative focus of these commercials puts a much stronger emphasis on a sense of family and community compared to the cow campaign. Much of KFC’s marketing has relied on an appeal to the consumer through a sense of humor. KFC utilizes their well-known mascot, Col. Sanders, in most of their advertisements. These ads normally consist of Col. Sanders giving a short and usually humorous small monologue about KFC’s chicken. Although the general structure of KFC’s Col. Sanders advertisements have not greatly changed since their inception, these ads maintain a sense of creativity and freshness by changing the actor playing Col. Sanders every couple years. The actors recruited to play Col. Sanders are almost always very famous comedians or well-known public figures.

CHICK-FIL-A GAME DAY AD

Popeyes has opted for a noticeably more wholesome and culturally-oriented marketing campaign in recent years. The spokesperson for Popeyes is “Annie the Chicken Queen,” who has only just recently been introduced as the recurring character in a series of advertisements. As opposed to major advertising campaigns executed by Chick-Fil-A and KFC, Popeyes tend to not invoke much humor in their “Annie the Chicken Queen” campaign. Instead, Popeyes advertisements often place Annie in a setting ripe with clothing, aesthetics and food signature to New Orleans, LA.

Public Opinion/Stakeholder Analysis

It is well known that Chick-Fil-A proudly brands itself as a company of traditional and biblical values, but received backlash for this after the 2012 controversy mentioned earlier. Since then Chick-Fil-A has gone to great lengths to reform public perception of their brand, and has succeeded tremendously. Their efforts to assist LGBTQ orginizations as well as their social media team have greatly bolstered public perception of the Chick-Fil-A brand. According to Mintel, Chick-Fil-A social media campaigns not only attracted new customers, but also led to the restaurant achieving the highest passion score. Besides social media, Chick-Fil-A has helped promote a positive public opinion by awarding over $45 million in scholarships to its employees. In addition to this, Chick-Fil-A restaurants make it a goal to give back to the community they’re a part of, and routinely donate surplus food to food pantries. Chick-Fil-A is a privately owned company, so they are not beholden to public shareholders. It is important to remember that the stakeholders of Chick-Fil-A are also the owners and family members of the company, so any advertising or social media campaign should give the utmost caution to not contradict the core family values that have been with Chick-Fil-A since its inception. Secondary-shareholders should also be taken into consideration when analyzing the full scope of those who could be impacted by Chick-Fil-A’s decisions. For example, Chick-Fil-A’s recently implemented “No Antibiotics Ever” campaign has put an increased focus on doing business with locally owned farms across the country, thus any decisions regarding ingredients should also consider how these local farms may be impacted. Furthermore, Chick-Fil-A’s employees are a crucial part of the entire company’s survival. It will be critical to keep this fact in mind at all times, and any decisions that could damage Chick-Fil-A employees’ reputations or financial security should be assessed with the utmost caution. 12

SWOT Analysis

Strengths Chick-Fil-A has established itself as a family-oriented brand with a good sense of humor. This has been accomplished in-part through a strong and funny ad campaign. The social media presence held by Chick-Fil-A is one of the strongest of any company in the fastfood industry. One of the strongest components of their social media accounts is a constant effort to interact with customers as much as possible. Utilizing Chick-Fil-A’s social media accounts effectively should be one of our biggest necessities. Chick-Fil-A is officially the most successful fast-food chicken restaurant in the United States, and has displayed consistent yearly growth.

Weaknesses Because of the controversy in 2012 it is important that we stay away from any kind of messaging that could be misconstrued as anti-LGBTQ. Unlike popular breakfast menus like McDonald’s, which is open 24/7, Chick-Fil-A’s breakfast menu only runs for about four hours per day.

Opportunities There is a steadily growing demand for fast but healthy menu options. Chick-Fil-A already has quite a few of these, but doesn’t necessarily market them as much as they could. One of Chick-Fil-A’s most well known quirks is the closing across the nation on Sundays. Utilizing that as a theme in our ad campaign could be very effective. Although Chick-FilA has made a strong and successful effort to make contributions to charities and local food pantries, they haven’t made it a strong component of any advertisements.

Threats Other competing fast-food chains, such as Wendy’s, also have a very strong and growing social media presence. It will be important to maintain the personality that Chick-Fil-A has established on social media, and we should try to avoid imitating the tones of other popular fast-food social media accounts. There has been a strong growth in recent years for the demand of “fastcasual” restaurants such Chipotle. It is worth considering pushing Chick-Fil-A as a fast-casual restaurant in future advertisements.

CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

Consumer Targets

Based on research from our Situation Analysis, we have designated two consumer targets for our campaign. These two targets can be summarized as Trendy Millennials and Emerging Families.

Primary Target: Trendy Millenials Meet Kaden and Olivia! Kaden are Olivia are in their early 20s and employed at small businesses, but still figuring out their lives. At this fickle time in their lives, they prioritize spending time with their friends and meeting new people. Kaden and Olivia are independent, but feel extremely connected to their friends and family through social media and other interactions. When it comes to eating, Kaden and Olivia prioritize affordability and short wait time. They may be looking for somewhere they can sit down and grab a quick bite with their friends. They also may be looking for something they can get quickly on their way to or from work. Although they don’t follow politics extensively, they would likely have qualms about supporting a company with questionable ethics.

Kaden

Olivia

Why Them? Bascom Media has selected this age group because they are commonly reliable consumers and an easy target to reach. Currently, Chick-fil-A and competitor KFC have equal millennial restaurant visitation at 27 percent (Mintel).

Now that Chick-fil-A has surpassed KFC as the most visited chicken-specific fast casual joint, Chick-fil-A should focus their efforts on beating out other restaurants in this category.(Mintel). For instance, Taco Bell brags 37 percent millennial visitation. Through this data, we know that there is a millennial market in the fast-casual food industry. With our campaign strategy, we plan to find more ways to appeal to this target in order to harness our full profit potential. Eighty-five percent of Chick-fil-A customers use social media (Simmons). Through this media, Chick-fil-A can communicate our campaign to this target. We also believe this is an important group to target because other companies are also trying to appeal to this group, and we believe this is a threat we must address.

Secondary Target: Emerging Families

John and Lauren

Meet John and Lauren! John and Lauren are newlyweds who have or are likely soon to start a family. When it comes to fast food dining, they prioritize short wait time and healthy eating options. As they are steadily getting older, they realize the importance of watching their diet. They also realize that they are going to have to switch their diets in order to care for their young ones. However, since they are young professionals, they want to have the option to have a quick restaurant they can depend on for family dinner. At this point in their lives, their focus is considerably on their family and advancing their career.

Why Them? John and Lauren are in Chick-fil-A’s largest age demographic 30-34 years old (Simmons). The majority of this consumer target demographic is married with 45 percent having at least one child and 75 percent being employed (Simmons). In order to capitalize on the success of our current consumers, our campaign wants to strengthen these ties and increase brand loyalty and awareness.

Campaign Strategy

This campaign will create positive brand associations between Chick-fil-A, love, and healthy lifestyles. These positive associations will lead to stronger brand awareness, customer loyalty, and higher sales. Currently, the company has a strong foundation of loyal customers, and the campaign will capitalize on the personable and unique qualities of Chickfil-A in order to target new and potential consumers. The campaign will emphasize Chick-filA’s best attributes such as customer service, food quality, and strong personality to preserve strong relations with existing loyal consumers as well as persuade our target markets. Chick-fil-A’s competitive advantage lies in their product specialization. Unlike other fast food chains that offer a variety of different meal options and meat choices, Chick-fil-A’s menu focuses on chicken. Although this could be viewed as a potential weakness, Chick-fil-A also has the opportunity to capitalize on this unique product specialization in comparison to others. Chick-fil-A’s unique selling proposition (USP) is their specialization in chicken, which is a healthier food option compared to most fast casual restaurants that focus on red meat. Chick-fil-A’s menu features chicken as its main source of protein, which is more likely to attract consumers looking for healthier options. The healthy eating index has been steadily increasing since 2008, and is expected to continue growing. Along with this, fast food industry consumption is also expected to continue growing and is still experiencing a bounce back after the 2008 recession (Ibis World Industry Report). This gives Chick-fil-A a competitive edge over other fast-food chains that offer red meat-heavy menus and provide consumers with limited healthy options. The company has established itself as the selfproclaimed inventors of the chicken sandwich, and the menu appeals to a variety of consumers ranging from early-birds and the health-conscious to consumers who value the classic combination of fried chicken and biscuits.

When compared to fast food giant McDonald's, Chick-fil-A offers a lot of similar menu items. Both chains offer a standard chicken sandwich, chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, and grilled chicken options. Lastly, both chains offer a breakfast menu which feature breakfast biscuit sandwiches. However, Chick-fil-A has advantages over McDonald’s products and other fast food chains. Compared to McDonalds, Chick-fil-A’s chicken menu items are generally more healthy. Chick-fil-A also offers grilled chicken nuggets, a unique item that other restaurants are not offering. Also, Chick-fil-A has chicken items on its breakfast menu unlike its competitors that usually only offer egg, bacon, or sausage combinations for morning menus. Due to these distinctions in their menu, Chick-fil-A is able to accommodate consumers’ cravings for healthy chicken breakfast, lunch and dinner products. Chicken sandwich

McDonald's

Chick-fil-A

Chicken tenders

510 calories 23g fat 50g carbs 25g protein

500 calories 27g fat 25g carbs 39g protein

440 calories 19g fat 40g carbs 28g protein

470 calories 23g fat 29g carbs 37g protein

This campaign’s product differentiation will be rooted in chicken optionality and fresh ingredients. Chick-fil-A boasts that their chicken is whole breast that contains no added fillers or hormones, and is breaded by hand in restaurant. In addition to this, their produce is delivered fresh several times a week and they are now committed to cage-free eggs. They have made continuous steps to find fresher ingredients, as seen when they recently removed high fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes and colors from some of their menu options (Chick-fil-A website). Chick-fil-A’s health conscious approach can be utilized to appeal to both target markets who are showing an increasing interest in healthy food options (Ibis). Chick-fil-A’s product positioning will be competing with McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s. Each of these brands have their own unique advantages with Wendy’s social media presence, Taco Bell’s appeal to millennials, and McDonald’s tradition of domination (Ibis). However, Chick-fil-A has the opportunity to leverage this campaign to strengthen their own unique aspects like their healthy options and brand personality, as mentioned before. Chick-fil-A’s current brand positioning is linking family and Christian values with quality chicken. Also, Chick-fil-A uses its historical presence in Georgia and the South as 18

part of their branding. However, because of the 2012 controversy, the current position still has an overcast of homophobic and heavily predominant-Christian values that have impacted the brand. The company made attempts to control damage after the controversy such as pulling funding from anti-LGBTQ causes (Peterson). Yet, Chick-fil-A’s brand still openly embraces Christian values and continues to define itself as a family-owned business that emphasizes being closed on Sundays. The founder’s purpose is still broadcasted on their website: “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come into conflict with Chick-fil-A.”

Chick-fil-A's Corporate Purpose

Recent branding has leaned more heavily on positive influence through community service and customer service. The desired brand position can be seen through their social media accounts and their campaigns. Chick-fil-A still holds true to their rest on Sunday’s mantra, by having their website say that people can use it as a day of worship as they please, but also are opting for a more inclusive image, so they pose their once Christianideals-inspired policy to be a day of worship “if they please” rather than the sole purpose of the day. Also, with the social media accounts and efforts, it is evident that one of their primary demographics and target markets is that they are trying to appeal to the young-20s millennial ages by having relatable accounts and memes. We think turning attention to this new generation of individuals shows how they are trying to still have their family values honored as well as changing with the times and becoming more inclusive. Also, this may be an exciting market for them since the younger age groups are less likely to remember or know about the 2012 controversy since they were relatively young when it occurred. Bascom Media © plans to transform the brand by associating Chick-fil-A’s wholesome loving values with our unique selling proposition. Our two target markets are close in age but at relatively different points in their lives. Although this complicates our campaign, we hope to unite these two target markets through their commonality of love, friendship, and the desire to live a healthy life. Since our primary target is at a point in their lives where they are likely dating and looking for love, this concept will appeal to them. Since our secondary target is likely recently married and still in the honeymoon stage, using love as an association point will also resonate with them. Bascom Media © plans to implement various forms of 19

relationships and love like daily interactions, long distance relationships, high school sweethearts, and the struggles of being single. These healthy values will then be connected to Chick-fil-A’s healthy products, promoting a wholesome healthy lifestyle. This new branding will lead to associations that still encapsulate Chick-fil-A’s value-based brand without the polarizing religious aspects. A simple way to encapsulate this branding campaign could be called “Chick-fil-Bae.” Our customers will know that they can depend on Chick-fil-A to pick them up when they’re feeling down. Whatever your relationship status is, you still have your one true love, Chickfil-A. We will associate these positive values with our chicken because both are “good for the heart” on a physical, spiritual, and mental level. “From the heart, for the heart” will be our slogan. For this campaign, we want to advertise on a seasonal basis and use factors specific to seasons such as holidays and large events to further the brand influence. We believe these will be an effective time to market because people will either be around those they love or missing their loved ones. We want to stir up emotional ties, and using seasons and events to stir up associations will be a good way to do so. For instance, a strong advertising campaign will emerge around Valentine’s Day since this is a common time of the year when people reflect on their loved ones and relationships. As Chick-fil-A has done in the past, advertising during major football games - like NFL and College Bowl games - will also be an effective time to reach our target market. Bascom Media will capitalize on these opportunities by building brand association during this time period. Regionally, Chick-fil-A would like to expand its base. Since it is a well-known name in the South, focusing more efforts on Northern and Eastern regions will be beneficial to the company’s growth (Ibis).

Map of Chick-fil-A locations, 2013.

However, while these more specific campaigns are being planned and executed, Chick-fil-A will also be establishing its brand and messaging on social media platforms at all times. We believe consistent marketing through these platforms will cater to our target markets since 85 percent of our current customers use social media (Simmons). 20

Because of this, the campaign will have minimal print ads and have an increased focus on mobile and digital media. In addition to this, the campaign will also utilize TV advertisements on network television to increase our reach. For these, we will select programs like E! News, New Girl, and Keeping up with the Kardashians that reach a large number of our target market (Simmons). If done successfully, we will influence audiences to pick Chick-fil-A on their way to work for breakfast, for a quick lunch break or to bring home for dinner to their family.

Creative Brief

Chick-fil-A’s brand personality has been established through their advertisement campaigns and family-oriented branding. Despite its religious influences and beliefs that may have caused controversy in the past, the company is dedicated to all of their employees and customers and has attempted to redefine the restaurant brand through positive customer service experiences and memorable advertising campaigns. The most defining campaign to date follows the cows and their “Eat Mor Chikin” advice that started in 1995. (3) Not only did this campaign emphasize Chick-fil-A’s diverse and healthier chicken menu, but also made the chain stand out from large burger-oriented restaurants through humorous ads and humanizing cows. However, this campaign has been going on for over twenty years and the brand personality is in need of a transformation. Since the cows have established this family friendly humor, this campaign will build on this established personality except switch gears from the cows narrative to the love narrative. The company will remain family-oriented to keep its current largest target market, though intends to broaden its scope in order to be the first choice in the minds of millennials as well. A new campaign will benefit the company and provide a new buzz. This campaign sets to liven up Chick-fil-A’s outdated brand and change people’s perceptions. Our campaign’s goal is to create positive associations between the company, acts of love, and the chicken . Our key word or phrase that we want people to take away from this campaign is “From the heart, for the heart." Chick-fil-A customers will believe that the company genuinely cares for their mental and physical wellbeing. With the success of this message, Chick-fil-A will also earn an expansion of customers, company awareness, and sales. 21

Our target audience should believe in us because they will be able to relate to us. By producing relatable content, consumers will feel a natural connection to our brands and products. After this connection is made, customers will be able to put together all of the positive aspects including healthy eating options, quality customer service, and wholesomeness in their mind. By creating an engaging and interactive campaign, our target will feel not just feel like a customer, they will feel like they are a part of the Chickfil-A family. Once they feel a part of this family, customers will want to care about and support Chick-fil-A. The broad goal of our campaign is to build positive associations and emotional ties with Chick-fil-A and their products. Customers will be thinking about the benefits of eating Chick-fil-A which will lead to them buying Chick-fil-A. When engaging with the campaign’s content, customers will likely feel warm and emotional. With this result, we believe sales will increase and positively impact people’s perception. In order to accomplish this, we want our audience to interact with Chick-fil-A through social media and other advertisement campaigns that connect their daily life with Chick-fil-A’s identity and encourage them to associate their daily activities and thoughts with our brand, which will encourage retention and awareness of our brand. Therefore, we want the target to have genuine emotional feelings about the campaign, specifically feelings of connection and commitment - the way one might feel about being around their family or loved ones, who are part of their everyday life. Our goal is to establish Chick-fil-A as a part of their life that they are connected to and committed to. They will associate Chick-fil-A as a healthy lifestyle, through both healthy relationships and healthy eating. We also want to enhance positive feelings about our brand and the experience customers have in our stores. We want customers to feel that they’re making a “good” choice by eating at Chick-fil-A in the sense that it’s one they can be proud of. Our campaign will simultaneously emphasize the healthiness of Chick-fil-A’s nearly allchicken menu with several grilled options, as well as the family values and kindness that makes Chick-fil-A a “good” choice, especially a choice you can feel good about making for your family and yourself. By touching on these points, we are appealing to the desires of our target markets. To accomplish this, our creative will use affective, value-oriented appeals that focus on the positive feelings of love, relationships and family. Since fast-food is a soft sell product, we want the customers to focus more on a feeling of commitment and connection to our brand and store experience while also implementing cognitive sell on the healthiness of our food. To do this, we will highlight the positive traits of our food in the context of a relationship. These positive feelings of love and commitment will be used in both to mirror the happiness of relationships that our customers already have, but also to emphasize the why everyone should want to be in a relationship, and especially a “relationship” with Chick-fil-A. 22

CREATIVE BRIEF

Big Idea Chick-fil-A is good for your heart--emotionally and physically. This big idea is the fuel behind Chick-fil-A’s newest advertising campaign produced by Bascom Media. Our slogan, “From the heart. For the heart.” ties together this concept for our audience and serves as the “here’s why” to follow Chick-fil-A’s tagline, “Eat More Chicken.” The theme throughout our creative is that healthy food can and should go hand in hand with healthy, loving family and romantic relationships, because loving someone means caring about their health, too. This campaign will feature one execution with the well-loved Chick-fil-A cow mascots, who bring an element of innocent, family-friendly humor that fits well into our campaign’s theme of positive, uplifting relationships.

The Appeal The reason our creative will appeal to purchasers, consumers, influencers and other audience members is that our creative executions for this campaign are hard not to love. We’ve adopted Chick-fil-A’s existing funny and gently uplifting voice from previous campaigns and applied it to our new idea of food that comes “from the heart” and “for the heart”. It’s a tone that is family-friendly, but the humor transcends age group. Our creative ties in many different incarnations of loving relationships, from parentchild to romantic relationships, which is a powerful feeling in our audience’s life--and that feeling they have for their loved ones will become connected to Chick-fil-A by association. We want Chick-fil-A to be seen as a place where healthy food, healthy choices and healthy relationships collide, because our food is a healthy choice that leads to healthy relationships inside and out. Additionally, our wholesome message emphasizing the health benefits of Chick-fil-A is designed to make consumers feel good about their choice to eat our food and to feed it to their family. This feeling of validation is an important aspect of our campaign that correlates to the level of “esteem” on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; parents wanted to be considered “good parents”, and in today’s health-conscious culture, eating healthy brings a certain status and respect with it.

Unique Selling Proposition Chick-fil-A’s unique brand qualities truly shine in this campaign. Chick-fil-A has long been known for its emphasis on hospitality and care for their customers, employees, and community in general. And obviously, Chick-fil-A is known for being all about chicken. In our creative executions, we emphasize caring for the loved ones in our lives and communities by feeding them chicken, which brings health benefits. This tie-in between family-centered values and health values perfectly embodies Chick-fil-A’s brand. Our emphasis on the health aspects of chicken also emphasizes our position in the market, where we are currently the #1 chicken fast-food restaurant.

Objectives

Our main objective is to make the audience feel validated and confident in their choice to eat and feed Chick-fil-A to their loved ones, as well as to feel connected to Chick-fil-A the same way they feel connected to their loved ones. We want the audience to feel motivated to choose Chick-fil-A when they purchase fast food, especially for their family, because of the positive, healthy benefits it will bring to their life, which will in turn enrich their relationships with each other. Our creative largely stays in tune with Chick-fil-A’s typical funny, uplifting and family-friendly brand personality. However, by pivoting to a health-centered appeal, our new creative campaign brings in a hard-sell aspect that encourages the audience to think of Chick-fil-A as a positive, smart purchase and look beyond the two lovable cow characters.

Television Commercial 1

"We Care About Your Heart" 30 seconds

Target: Trendy Millennials, who may understand and sympathize the feelings of being cheated on or lied to by a former significant other Message: This piece shows how Chick-fil-A not only cares about serving healthy chicken for the heart, but also how the restaurant can be associated with happy feelings and emotions as well. This piece shows Chick-fil-A is both heart-healthy and heart-happy by helping a college-aged girl who just had her heart broken by her cheating ex-boyfriend. Appeal: This piece appeals to relevance and relatability. It is often difficult to find ‘the one’ and have serious relationships for this age group, therefore many millennials have likely experienced a bad breakup caused by problems such as cheating or lies. By using an emotional appeal, millennials could likely associate Chick-fil-A to happiness and having strong, stable friends to keep you going through difficult times.

Shot 1: Zooming in on girl holding a picture frame of her and (now ex) boyfriend. VO: Sigh.

Shot 2: Girl starting to cry and sitting on bathroom floor. VO: Sniffles, heavy breathing and subtle crying.

Shot 4: Video cuts to the girl starting to smile and leave the bathroom with friends, bags in hand. VO:“We care about your heart, and so does our heart-healthy, all-white and never ground chicken. 26

Shot 3: A friend’s hand outstretched with a bag of Chick-fil-A SOT: Uplifting music starting to play in the background

Final Shot: Chick-fil-A logo VO: "Treat others how Chick-filA treats you."

Television Commercial 2

"Friends Have Your Back" 30 seconds

Target: Trendy Millennials, who can relate to having a lot of work to do whether it be through school, career, or relationships. They relate to feeling busy, stressed, and overwhelmed. They also place a strong value on their friendships and relationships with others. Message: This piece shows show Chick-fil-A’s love and support of an individual’s goals and pursuits. This message will show that Chick-fil-A has your back, like a good friend who is looking out for your social, mental, and physical wellbeing. Appeal: This piece is relatable. The audience will feel a kinship to the characters and understand their plight. If they do not have a friendship like the on portrayed in the commercial, they are likely to crave one like this which will then be associated with Chick-fil-A. Through this, viewers will associate Chick-fil-A with friendship and support.

Shot 1: Outside of library at night.

Shot 4: Shots 2-3 repeat, but it is now 6 am. The boy has fallen asleep.

Shot 2: Boy at table studying, looking tired SOT: Wild noise from library aka flipping pages, typing, etc.

Shot 5: A friend brings Chick-fil-A to the sleeping boy. They share a moment.

Shot 3: Shows the time (2 am)

Final Shot: Chick-fil-A logo VO: Friends have your back. With all natural, antibiotic free white-meat chicken, so does Chick-filA. Treat others how Chickfil-A treats you. 27

Billboard Advertisement Target: Quite broad because of the nature of the medium; it is meant pretty generally for anyone driving on the highway where it is placed. However, the wholesome, playful humor of the billboard is designed to appeal especially to families, which comprises the secondary target audience (Emerging Families) for our campaign. Message: This piece aims to position Chick-fil-A as a healthy fast-food choice and emphasize the message that chicken is a relatively healthier choice than red meat served at other fast-food restaurants while using humor. The humor comes from the realization that the cows are promoting chicken as a doctor-approved choice in order to save themselves from being turned into hamburgers, but even though the message is meant to be humorous, the idea that chicken is a better choice for the consumer as well as the cow is intended to stick around in the viewer’s mind. Appeal: This piece uses a familiar and fun use of humor, but is also appealing because choosing healthy options for their family is likely important to parents or those with dependent loved ones. The idea of fast food that tastes good and won’t flood your heart with saturated fats and cholesterol will be appealing to parents who want to satisfy hungry kids in the backseat.

Chick-fil-A’s advertising originated with billboards and the lovable Chick-fil-A cows. For this reason, we decided to include a billboard with these familiar elements that also tied in to our new campaign’s Big Idea of health and the heart. 28

Print Advertisement

Facebook With Facebook, we will target our audience of millennials by featuring content that highlights the importance of healthy relationships within the campaign. These “treat your chick-filBAE the right way” creative pieces specifically targets millennials. As millennials are drawn to understanding text lingo (such as “bae”), these creative advertisements emphasize the idea that choosing Chick-fil-A over other food options is the popular and trendy choice. These advertisements also coincides with our slogan “from the heart, for the heart” as we are attempting to give helpful relationship advice that shows Chick-fil-A’s compassion for people in romantic relationships.

Instagram We will utilize Instagram to target emerging families by creating creative advertisements that commemorates parents for raising their families, while displaying the company’s care for the well-being of all kids. These ads tie into our campaign by demonstrating that the way a parent loves their kid is the same way Chick-fil-A loves its customers. Additionally, we will have real families help our advertising by reposting images from users who share photos of them eating Chick-Fil-A. We believe that this will have an enormous influence on our target audience and encourage customers to share their Chick-Fil-A experience with the world.

Snapchat One of the most common trends in interactive media and prevalent influencers in a young-adult’s social media usage is the adoption of interactive filters with Snapchat. We will reach the overall relatability with our most prominent target market with the intended message of our interactive filters. Most people today use the phrase “phone eats first” meaning, people take pictures of what they eat and post them on their social media profiles. That being said, if the phone eats first, then so does Chick-fil-A. When picking out what filter and geolocation to use, users will see Chick-fil-A and want to join the mass public in consuming and documenting it on their Snapchat stories. Chick-fil-A’s top two target markets of trendy millennials and young emerging families more often than not have Snapchat on their phones, so this will reach our demographics as we plan and hopefully persuade them to chose Chick-fil-A, an accessible and relatable company with a geofilter. Our target audience would pay attention to this because they don’t want to be out of the loop. There is a fine line between being with the common culture but not being basic, and Snapchat stories is where people can find the fine line. No one wants to be the person left out, they will pay attention to this message because there isn’t much for them to do other than use it for snap chats and buy Chick-fil-A’s products.

(You can “TRY IT WITH A FRIEND” or “OPEN YOUR MOUTH” or “BLOW A KISS” and in return, the chicken nugget would be dancing and blowing kisses) 32

MEDIA PLAN

Objectives The average Chick-fil-a customer profile does not boast of particularly diverse demographics - the restaurant’s consumer group is relatively gender neutral and primarily white. Simmons data shows that an average customer might be 40 years old, a homeowner, married and employed with an income of roughly $80k. Chick-fila’s most popular consumer age groups vary between individuals of the millennial generation and young, emerging families. The tops three consumer age groups, in order, are 25-34 years old, 35-44 years old and 18-24 years old. We want to continue to reach our most popular consumers, but we also want to make an effort to reach those outside of our average demographic. In order to reach this audience, we need to be using platforms that are used by a wide variety of people. The campaign should maintain its focus on major sporting events or major millennial events, but should also target mediums that are popular among our broader demographic. Among these platforms are free ones like social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat), as well as ad spots on YouTube and Uber - these two platforms were listed in the top 10 downloaded Apps for Apple products in 2017. Advertising on platforms popular among millennials, like Pinterest, allows for affordances such as targeted advertising - we can use data to target specific consumers based on attributes of our choosing.

Frequency & Reach Bascom Media has formulated a high-frequency campaign that will target selected audiences by emphasizing specific regions throughout the year. Social media platforms are the ideal vehicle to incept campaign’s themes and ideas into consumers’ minds prior to our structured media pulses throughout the year. The campaign features hashtags which give users the opportunity to actively participate in our campaign no matter the time of year.

Campaign Timeframe The campaign will run a year-long course, beginning on January 1, 2019 and ending on December 31, 2019. The campaign is structured to run frequently and fairly consistently, and a 365-day timeframe allots for multiple periods of stressed advertising without sacrificing a desired balance of advertisements, so as not to overwhelm our audience. 34

Throughout the campaign year, advertising will be stressed based on our Objectives creative promotions and college and professional football seasons. In the spirit of love, we will be capitalizing on the Valentine’s Day holiday and the month of February to advertise heavily and frequently. During the first half of February, we will be pushing Chick-fil-a’s “From the heart, for the heart” promotion efforts in honor of National Red Day for Heart Health Awareness (February 1), National Self-Love Day (February 13) and Valentine’s Day (February 14). The “#Chick-fil-bae” Snapchat filter and the chicken sandwich proposal ad will air during the first 14 days of February. In the interest of maintaining consistent advertisements, the “#Chick-fil-day-off” Snapchat filter will run on the first Sunday of each month. This interactive filter will allow Chick-fil-a to embrace company values while creating relationships with its consumers - users can share how they are spending their own day off, while Chickfil-a honors its own day off. Chick-fil-a is a proud sponsor of the Peach Bowl, and Bascom Media © would like to incorporate the company’s athletic identity into this campaign. In order to do so, we will be stressing advertisements during the regular NFL season, Monday Night Football games and College Bowl Games.

Jan 2018

Dec 2018

Media Apertures We plan to capitalize on primetime and late night air times in order to run an effective and efficient campaign. According to our data, our broader demographic is more likely to be watching television during these times, and we will be able to narrow our target audiences by tailoring the geographic emphasis of our advertisements. For the sake of strategic advertising, we concluded that late night programs, especially on Sunday nights, would serve as an effective reminder for consumers to grab breakfast at Chick-fil-a the next morning. Sunday night advertisements will cure consumers’ “Sunday scaries” by reminding them that they can start their Monday with Chick-fil-a. 35

Airing advertisements during low-traffic media hours such as in the middle of the Objectives day, after morning rush hours and during the middle of the night would be both ineffective and illogical. We will not be using any radio advertisements, since radio broadcast is less popular among our broader demographic. That being said, advertising during rush-hour traffic should be avoided. All advertisements, no matter the media aperture, will be seized should any controversy or tragedy arise. Bascom Media approaches crisis in a pragmatic and practical manner, and we will put a temporary hold on advertisements until the company decides how it would like to handle the situation at hand.

Regional Emphasis

Since its inception in Georgia in 1967 and subsequent growth as a regional fast-food chain, the Chick-fil-A name has become well-loved and well-known in southern states. Chick-fil-a’s brand identity remains firmly rooted in southern culture. The market area in the South is stable, but it is not particularly ripe for growth - we want to create stronger ties in areas which are less familiar with the Chick-fil-a brand. In recent years, the franchise established restaurants in all but three states in the U.S., however, the southern region remains more heavily concentrated with Chick-fil-a restaurants. For example, Simmons data shows that New Yorkers are less likely to eat at Chick-fil-a than Southerners, so concentrating advertisements in areas where the franchise has recently expanded will aid in establishing a base of regular consumers. A majority of advertising strategies will be geared towards gaining recognition in states where Chick-fil-a has recently established restaurants, like New York, Michigan, Oregon and Washington.

Shifts in regional emphasis will primarily be determined by popular holidays and Objectives athletic events. Bascom Media plans to emphasize spot advertisement in northern and eastern regions to create appeal and awareness, but some advertisements will remain allocated to the South in order to maintain Chick-fil-A’s Southern identity. According to Simmons data, Chick-fil-A consumers in the South are more likely to watch sporting events such as Monday Night Football and regular season football games. The National Football League (NFL) regular season begins the weekend after Labor Day in early September and ends in December or early January. During this 17-week period, Chick-fil-A will emphasize the market area of the South to appeal to this target market. February is an ad-heavy month, and we will be targeting national audiences instead of prioritizing certain regions. In an effort to balance a high-frequency campaign without sacrificing an important consumer audience based in the South, most advertisements that run during sporting events will be aired mostly in the southern region. For the remainder of the calendar year, advertisements will be aired primarily in the northern and eastern regions. Geographically speaking, advertisement efforts will begin in the East and North, then move to the South later in the calendar year. More specifically, we intend to target regions displaying strong population growth and economic stability when marketing to our emerging families target market, such as suburbs of major cities in the U.S.

Media Scheduling Strategies Bascom Media ©’s media scheduling strategy could best be described as pulsing, given the emphasis on associating the campaign with various holidays and seasons throughout the fiscal year. The decision to pulsate our advertising efforts will provide us with the opportunity to further build associations between Chick-FilA and specific holidays and seasonal events that are immensely popular with our target markets. Additionally, the pulsing strategy will assist in keeping Chick-Fil-A’s advertisements fresh and inventive, while also giving Bascom Media the ability to adjust minor components of upcoming promotions to best accommodate the current media landscape. Many of our proposed marketing and promotional campaigns contain a seasonal component, which will drive the campaign’s media pulses. Both our “#Chick-Fil-Bae” and “Spread the Chick-Fil-Love” campaigns are strongly associated with Valentine’s Day, and the holiday will prompt the campaign’s first pulse during the first half of February. The “It’s Our Pleasure” campaign will run during the months of March, April and May to minimize downtime between promotional campaigns and maximize an association with National Military Awareness Month in May. 37

This small-scale promotion will precede the combination of national billboard Objectives posted in May and advertisements during the MTV Movie Awards in June, which will spur the campaign’s second pulse during the early summer months. College game days and the NFL regular season will prompt the third and final pulse of the campaign, beginning in September. The frequency of college and professional football games and exposure to a high density of our target consumers will provide a powerful source of brand exposure on a near weekly basis during football season.

Media Allocations & Spending Media Allocation and Spending

$60 million will be split up between Impact Media Spending, Fixed Digital Media Objectives Spending, CPM Digital Media Spending and Traditional Media. The majority of the budget is dedicated to CPM Digital Media Spending, as this is the most popular medium among our broader demographic audience. Advertising through social media will reach relevant audiences and allow consumers to integrate the Chick-fila brand into their everyday lives. In an effort to establish Chick-fil-a as a household name among our broader demographic, social media provides optimal interactive mediums where users can create associations between the restaurant and their personal lives. For example, a user’s significant other will become their “#Chick-filbae” during the month of February - we are working to build ties with consumers. Through careful evaluation of our audience, we discovered that certain websites and apps are more popular among consumers than others. Consumers are more likely to use the internet to access websites like Pinterest and ESPN, while they are more likely to access apps like Uber, LYFT and SoundCloud using their smartphones. In choosing where to air our advertisements, we considered the popularity of the platform, the affordances it offers and how utilizing that platform will contribute to the overall goals of the campaign. Emphasis of different forms of promotional content is dependent on which mediums our specific target markets identify with. Print, video, banner and native ads targeting older millennials and emerging families, will be emphasized through mediums that are more popular among consumers over 30 years of age, such as Facebook, YouTube and print magazines such as US Weekly, Marie Claire and SELF. By the same token, print, video, banner and native ads targeting younger millennials and college students will be featured on apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Uber, LYFT and SoundCloud. Our “#Chick-Fil-Bae” campaign will air primarily via Snapchat through the use of filters. The use of hashtags will serve as the driving force behind the “Chick-Fil-Game-Day” and the “It’s Our Pleasure.” These campaigns will thrive on apps and websites with the appropriate technological affordances – mediums that utilize hashtags – like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Our research shows that Google is the most popular search engine among our Objectives broader demographic, so we will utilize SEM throughout the 12-month calendar year. We have chosen 10 words to associate with our year-long campaign: "healthy chicken," "fast food," "biscuit," "nugget," "sandwich," "fresh ingredients," "local.” Each time a user searches any of these words, Chick-fil-a will appear in their search results - we are associating the restaurant brand with positive attributes and highlighting our efforts to strive for healthier and fresher fast-food. Our creative team has crafted unique and interactive Snapchat filters for this campaign. The “#Chick-fil-bae” filter will run from February 1-February 14, and the “#Chick-fil-day-off” filter will run the first Sunday of every month. According to Simmons data, millennials and young emerging families are exceptionally active on Snapchat, and we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. Bascom Media is confident that photo advertisements will reach more eyes via Snapchat than any other social media platform. In the interest of tending to our audience, we chose a range of Impact Media buys to satisfy consumers’ personal preferences. Ads will air during Monday Night Football and College Bowl Games to appeal to sports fans, and we also plan to air an advertisement during the MTV Movie Awards to appeal to millennials who are more interested in pop-culture. Billboards have been an integral part of Chick-fil-A’s advertisements, and we plan to honor that tradition. In addition, billboard ads are not subject to day part scheduling - they are constant and highly visible. In accordance with the heavy amount of advertisement during the month of February, billboards will be posted nationally throughout different markets. There is a slight lull in between major advertisements during the month of May, so billboards will again be posted nationally in order to promote consistent sales. Traditional media is a useful tool for advertising as well, although we have allocated a minority of the budget towards this medium. During the NFL regular season, we plan to emphasize advertisements in the South via network channels. For the remainder of the year, especially in February, we will use network spot advertisements in the northern and southern regions to gain brand awareness and attract customers to more recently established restaurants. We have selected primetime and late night programs that are popular among our broader demographic during which we will air advertisements. Millennials and young emerging families are likely to view shows such as New Girl, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Keeping Up with the Kardashians and E! News. As for late night programming, we plan to run advertisements during Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Last Call with Carson Daly - according to our research, consumers are more likely to watch these late night programs. 40

Media Flow ChartsÂ

Proper timing is crucial for a successful campaign. We plan to advertise consistently throughout the year, while placing emphasis on the NFL Regular Season and the month of February. During the months in between these peakadvertisement times, a variety of ads will be spread throughout the year. Periods of downtime will be filled with ads on a variety of platforms - this way, we can avoid bombarding our audience with advertisements, but still keep a consistent ad schedule. Banner ads, video ads and interstitial ads will run fairly consistently throughout the calendar year on websites such as Pinterest, ESPN and Facebook and apps such Uber, LYFT and SoundCloud. The ads will run to supplement each other - in order to avoid ad overload, some ads will be running every other month while others will run during the months in between.

PR PLAN

Objectives Objectives With Chick-fil-A’s recent surpassing of Kentucky Fried Chicken as the number one chicken-oriented quick service restaurant in the U.S., the main goal for our public relations and promotions proposal during this “from the heart, for the heart” campaign is to maintain this newly-earned and well-deserved feat. As a family-owned business, Chick-fil-A’s values of a close-knit community are measured by its progress in the relationships it creates with the communities surrounding the company. The way we see it, for Chick-fil-A, it is not just about the sale, it is about the person behind it. This compassion for customers allowed Chick-fil-A to be number one and inspired our new campaign focusing on the health and the happiness of one of the most vital parts of the company: the public. It will be the role of the PR and Promotions team to further demonstrate how Chick-fil-A values customers through its initiatives, promotions and contests, community involvement and programs that align with consumer values of good-tasting food that is good for you.

Stakeholder Considerations As stated before, our primary and secondary target consumers are trendy millennials and emerging families. Below are findings from Simmons and Mintel data that further show what is important to our consumers regarding our proposed events.

Primary Target Consumer: Trendy Millennials While starting a new season of their lives, these trendy millennials value strong ties to their family and friends. This group prefers a quick, healthy and reasonably priced alternative to traditional fast food restaurants. According to Mintel, Chick-fil-A and competitor KFC have the equal millennial restaurant visitation at 27 percent. With our promotional goals in mind and Chick-fil-A’s recent surpassing of KFC as the most visited chicken-oriented fast casual joint, Chick-fil-A should focus their PR and Promotional efforts on maintaining this level of success.

Secondary Target: Emerging Families Newly-married couples are transitioning into a stage of life where they should be maintaining a healthy diet not only for themselves, but to establish a healthy lifestyle for their future family. According to Simmons, this market is Chick-fil-A’s largest demographic, 45

and reinforces stronger brand loyalty, Chick-fil-A is here to help emerging families by offering healthy options for each member of the family.

Objectives Our Chick-fil-A Family: the Employees

Based off of Chick-fil-A’s fundamental philosophies, along with caring about the wellness of its customers, the employees of this company are valued as well. With efforts to promote higher education opportunities, Chick-fil-A dedicates part of its revenue to rewarding employees with financial aid and scholarships. Also, while historically having Sundays off, Chick-fil-A sees this as a necessity for the emotional well-being of its workers to have a day off.

Public Opinion According to Mintel, Chick-fil-A's previous social media and advertising campaigns increased the overall consumer base for the restaurant as well as spread awareness of the company's values and popular menu items. The Mintel report additionally indicated how Chick-fil-A's menu fostered a loyal following among both genders by promoting its menus health benefits for reasonable prices, two important factors for our target markets. Along with the insights from Mintel, Bascom Media conducted a survey through Qualtrics asking consumers to evaluate their preferences towards dining at quick service restaurants like Chick-fil-A. The questions asked were crafted to observe customer attitudes towards brand personality and which type of company they are most likely to interact with. Our survey results indicated connections between consumer values and restaurant preferences such as the need for healthy menu items, positive customer service experiences, the implementation of a diverse menu suited well for all ages and serving reasonably priced food.

Media Relations Strategy

Encouraging Media Coverage & Reasoning Considering the campaign goal to further the successful, national status of Chick-fil-A, we strive to create a campaign centered around diverse media coverage that will appeal to our primary target markets. Following our proposal, we attached a list of potential media 46

contacts that we believe would assist in reaching our primary and secondary audiences while conveying Chick-fil-A’s messages through our proposed “from the heart, for the Objectives heart” campaign. Along with each media contacts’ affiliations, we have researched their credentials and created rationales as for why they are a good fit to report on the potential fil-A promotional events. By handpicking media contacts for optimal coverage, Chick-fil-A could fulfill its goal of spreading awareness about its caring brand personality and overall shape a positive image for the establishment.

Key Promotional Efforts Our overall promotional efforts for this campaign plan support ideas outlined in the situation analysis and campaign strategy. To help strengthen Chick-fil-A’s brand, we will focus on:

Serving Healthier Food Options as a Fast Service Restaurant.

Chick-fil-A’s unique selling position is centered around serving all-white, never ground chicken without added hormones as opposed to its fast-food competitors that primarily use red meat for their menu items. Chick-fil-A values the health of its customers and the general good by partnering with foundations such as the American Heart Association for promoting holidays for disease awareness. Healthier options are what makes Chick-fil-A the highest rated quick service restaurant in its industry and all promotional efforts will emphasize this fact.

Chick-fil-A

Cares About its Customers.

As we see through the promotional events like the #SpreadTheChickFilLove initiative, Chick-fil-A can promote acts of kindness and love for everyone in the community. Also, with the partnership and donations to the National Military Associations Spouse Scholarship Program, Chick-fil-A shows its compassion for the loved ones of the armed forces. Chickfil-A prides itself on believing traditional family values and should promote that they care about the family as a whole.

From the Heart. For the Heart.

TheObjectives main point tying the PR and promotional events together is the purpose behind our proposed campaign. Everything that Chick-fil-A would do throughout this campaign would indicate that it is from their hearts to the hearts of consumers. Chick-fil-A not only cares about the physical well-being Key Promotional Effortsof customers, but also their emotional wellness. The #SpreadTheChickFilLove campaign embodies Chick-fil-A’s concerns for the holistic consumer, not just their wallets.

PR and Promotional Tactics Through promotions, giveaways, sweepstakes and other interactive contests, we see our proposed promotional and PR events as strong methods for reinforcing associations with the Chick-fil-A brand and raising awareness for this campaign. Through these tactics, we hope to further promote Chick-fil-A’s involvement and relationship with its customers. To do this, we formulated several PR and promotional events for participants to share photographs from their own lives under a shared hashtag and bring together their love for their families or significant others with their feeling of connection and community with Chick-fil-A.

“Spread the Chick-fil-Love”

Bascom Media is very excited about this initiative that encompasses the main ideas behind our “from the heart, for the heart” campaign. We have created an interactive challenge that would take place during the first two weeks of February to focus on a season of love called “Spread the Chick-fil-Love.” The two-week challenge will start on the first of February and end on Valentine’s Day. The first day of this initiative is National Wear Red Day in the United States, which is a day of awareness for women’s heart health. Traditionally, people wear red on this day to symbolize their support toward finding a cure and saving women suffering from cardiovascular disease: the number one killer of women in the U.S.. The idea is that Chickfil-A will have a creatively designed backdrop that reads “Spread the Chick-Fil-Love by donating to the American Heart Association” in their restaurants. 48

Tactics PR Forand eachPromotional Instagram or Facebook post from customers wearing red, by showing their Chick-fil-A meals and using the hashtags #SpreadTheChickFilLove and Objectives #GoRedForWomen, to honor the Go Red For Women Foundation created by the American Heart Association, we propose that Chick-fil-A could donate $0.33 in honor of theKey 1 in 3Promotional women that die of Efforts heart disease every year. While this time of year is usually dedicated to Valentine’s Day and limited to romantic relationships, Chick-fil-A could take the season of romance a step further to celebrate all aspects of love and the heart. Being a healthier food restaurant and a compassionate company, we believe this campaign aligns perfectly with the values of Chick-fil-A. After the National Wear Red Day kickoff, throughout the rest of the campaign, Chickfil-A would be doing daily social media contests where customers can send in posts and complete acts of love and kindness each day. The proposed days and events for the campaign are:

February 1 → Heart Health Day February 2 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your neighbors February 3 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your family February 4 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your co-workers February 5 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your mailman February 6 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your kids February 7 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your teachers February 8 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to the men and women in service February 9 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your elders/mentors February 10 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your parents February 11→ #SpreadTheChickFilLove to the unsung heroes February 12 → #SpreadTheChickFilLove to your biggest hero February 13 → National Self-Love Day Event February 14 → Valentine’s Day and #ChickFilBae Event

The overall purpose behind these two weeks is to promote acts of love and kindness and Promotional for PR the important people in our Tactics lives, not just romantic partners. Prior to the kickoff, Chickfil-A would develop rules for the challenge to incentivize more involvement. If customers Objectives want to become more involved, they can increase their chances win two tickets to the iHeartRadio music festival in Las Vegas.

Key Promotional Efforts

The second of the big three events of this campaign will take place on February 13, which is National Self-Love day. On this day, Chick-fil-A would create customized “I love myself because…” napkins in their restaurants. Customers who write something on their Chick-fil-A napkins and post a picture on one of their social media accounts will be put in a raffle to be chosen to win an all-inclusive spa day from Chick-fil-A and up to 100 winners will be named. The last event in the “Spread the Chick-Fil-Love” challenge will take place on Valentine’s Day. Customers participating in the challenge on Valentine’s Day must bring a friend, significant other, or even a stranger to show an act of love at the register to get a buy-one-get-one free chicken sandwich. This not only reinforces Chick-fil-A’s values of relationships and togetherness, but it also creates the idea among participants that Chickfil-A cares personally about their customers as well as important issues like heart disease and self-love. The overall purpose behind these two weeks is to promote acts of love and kindness for the important people in our lives, not just romantic partners. Prior to the kickoff, Chick-filA would develop rules for the challenge to incentivize more involvement. If customers want to become more involved, they can increase their chances win two tickets to the iHeartRadio music festival in Las Vegas. The second of the big three events of this campaign will take place on February 13, which is National Self-Love day. On this day, Chick-fil-A would create customized “I love myself because…” napkins in their restaurants. Customers who write something on their Chick-fil-A napkins and post a picture on one of their social media accounts will be put in a raffle to be chosen to win an all-inclusive spa day from Chick-fil-A and up to 100 winners will be named. The last event in the “Spread the Chick-Fil-Love” challenge will take place on Valentine’s Day. Customers participating in the challenge on Valentine’s Day must bring a friend, significant other, or even a stranger to show an act of love at the register to get a buy-one-get-one free chicken sandwich. This not only reinforces Chick-fil-A’s values of relationships and togetherness, but it also creates the idea among participants that Chick-filA cares personally about their customers as well as important issues like heart disease and self-love. 50

“Chick-Fil-Bae” PR and Promotional Tactics Another contest that ties our campaign together focuses on love and personal

connections Objectives by using the hashtag #Chick-fil-Bae. This initiative will run through the first half of February due to this month being commonly associated with Valentine’s day and love. This will encourage participants to share their love stories using the hashtag on Instagram, Key Twitter or Promotional Facebook with theEfforts winning post receiving an all-expenses paid, romantic getaway to an exotic destination. This initiative will foster a sense of compassion by showing that Chick-fil-A personally cares about their relationships, and wants to foster a personal relationship with the customer too through interactive media.

“It’s Our Pleasure” Many Chick-fil-A customers notice how employees of Chick-fil-A are trained to say “my pleasure” when serving food. Based off of this saying, we have designed a charity event that advances the values that Chick-fil-A holds closest to its heart while also connecting with our campaign. The “It’s Our Pleasure” fundraiser will donate a portion of Chick-fil-A’s revenue from the month of May (National Military Awareness Month) to the National Military Family Associations’ Spouse Scholarship program, which supports the education and careers of military spouses—so that everyone’s “Chick-fil-Bae” is taken care of. This fundraiser ties in our campaign’s main theme of love and relationships with Chick-fil-A’s larger mission to support families. We hope this charitable event will add positivity to Chick-fil-A’s reputation, while remaining authentically committed to its family values.

“Chick-fil-GameDay” Chick-fil-GameDay participants can share photos on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram of the fun and unique ways they celebrate football game days with their crew. The winning photo will receive a fully-catered football party from Chick-fil-A. This contest emphasizes the family values of Chick-fil-A with an event that will hopefully interest our top two target markets. Additionally, the process of submitting photos to #Chick-fil-Gameday and scrolling through other posts will hopefully create an association of Chick-fil-A and the traditional values of a supportive community.

Press Releases Below are example press releases for what Bascom Media believes could be beneficial public relations efforts for Chick-fil-A to stimulate consumption. The events highlighted are some of the most effective publicity events within the proposed campaign for Chick-fil-A, including partnerships with the American Heart Association and the National Military Associations’ Spouse Scholarship Program. 51

PR and Promotional Tactics Objectives Key Promotional Efforts

PR andContact Promotional Media List Tactics Objectives Key Promotional Efforts

Andy Staples Sports Illustrated, Senior Writer Twitter: @andy_staples

Allison Garfield Daily Cardinal, Arts Editor Contact: arts@dailycardinal.com

Ashley Day USA Today Eats and USA Today Travel, Editor Contact: asday@usatoday.com Twitter: @ashnday

Christina Troitino Food and Agriculture Business Writer Contact: christinatroitino@gmail.com Twitter: @ChristinaTinNYC

I-Chun Chen Freelance Journalist Contact: bizjournalsla@gmail.com

Jane Black Food Writer Contact: jane@janeblack.net Twitter: @jane_black

Janine Puhak Fox News Lifestyle, Editor Twitter: @janinepuhak

Jill Kazlow The Badger Herald, Arts Editor Contact: jkazlow@badgerherald.com

Marie Telling BuzzFeed Food, Senior Writer Contact: marie.telling@buzzfeed.com Twitter: @marietelling

Melissa Simon Madison Spoon University Employee Contact: msimon8@wisc.edu

Niraj Chokshi The New York Times, Reporter Contact: niraj.choksi@nytimes.com Twitter: @nirajc

PR Newswire East Coast: 800.826.3133 West Coast: 866.732.1382 Twitter: @prnewswire

APPENDIX

Situation Analysis 1. Rhodan, M. (2014, March 17). Chick fil A CEO Regrets Same-Sex Marriage Debacle. Retrieved from http://time.com/27940/chick-fil-a-dan-cathy-gay-marriage/ 2. Peterson, H. (2017, August 06). 'Chick-fil-A is about food': How national ambitions led the chain to shed its polarizing image. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/chickfil-a-reinvents-itself-liberal-conservative-2017-5 3. Brown, M., Schwartz, M., Davis, B., & Canaski, B. (n.d.). Fast Food Industry. Lecture. Retrieved from https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/jl2545/4160/presentation/FastFood.pptx. 4. Brown, M., Schwartz, M., Davis, B., & Canaski, B. (n.d.). Fast Food Industry. Lecture. Retrieved from https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/jl2545/4160/presentation/FastFood.pptx. 5. CBS News. (2015, May 05). Healthy fast food? Americans are eating it up. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/healthy-fast-food-americans-are-eating-it-up/ 6.American Heart Association. (n.d.). Healthy Living: Eat More Chicken, Fish and Beans. Retrieved from http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Nutrition/Eat-MoreChicken-Fish-and-Beans_UCM_320278_Article.jsp

Campaign Strategy 1. Mintel Quick Service Restaurants - Visitation by Chain http://academic.mintel.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/display/834663/?highlight 2. IbisWorld Industry Report - Fast Food Restaurants http://clients1.ibisworld.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/reports/us/industry/default.aspx? entid=1980#ID 3. Chick-fil-A website https://www.chick-fil-a.com/ 4. McDonald’s website https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/.html 5. Peterson, Hayley. (2017, August 06). 'Chick-fil-A is about food': How national ambitions led the chain to shed its polarizing image. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/chick-fil-a-reinvents-itself-liberal-conservative-2017-5 6. Simmons OneView Database 7. Mapping Chick-fil-A Nation, Washington Post, Reid Wilson https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/06/16/mapping-chick-fil-anation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8d823985abd9

Media Plan 1. Nusca, Andrew. (2017, December 09).The Most Popular Google Android and Apple iOS Apps of 2017. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2017/12/29/best-most-popular-apps/