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Cows Versus Chickens
The imaginary war that your favorite chicken restaurant made up
Like many people, I used to think the advertising scheme used by Chick-fil-A was clever — cows doing the marketing against chickens. I couldn’t help but laugh at the awfully misspelled words in dripping black ink that covered billboards across the United States.
In my freshman year of college I decided to take up a vegan lifestyle. All of the sudden, a switch was flipped. Anyone who has transitioned to a vegan diet, especially for ethical reasons, can tell you that the world just looks different. You see body parts on everyone’s plates. You see many zoos, aquariums, and rodeos as oppressive theme parks. You just change.
One of those things that I immediately noticed after my vegan evolution was how ridiculous Chick-fil-A’s advertising was. There was no war on chickens being coordinated from cows. It was completely imaginary; but to sell chicken sandwiches, the whole story worked incredibly well. I dug deeper into this story. Here’s what I found.
The History of the Cow-Chicken Conflict
“In 1995,” per Chick-fil-A’s website “a renegade cow, paintbrush in mouth, painted the three words “EAT MOR CHIKIN” on a…
