Chipotle takes a Fiona Apple bite out of Big Food in their short film The Scarecrow, sparking conversations and spawning food advocacy through advertisement. Having gone viral since it’s debut in September, it’s certainly angered conventional agricultural reps befittingly crying foul play. But really, you may never want to eat meat again.
The vivid associations rattle around in my brain unsettling my gut.
Is this a colossal backfire or a blooming blockbuster? Does all this negative attention make you want to eat at Chipotles? Is this a brand you want to get behind? Let’s give them credit for planting a – searching for the right word here, stake in the ground.
The short film opens with a too skinny, morose scarecrow entering a smoke emitting monolithic factory: Crow Foods Incorporated. A soundtrack languishes on with Fiona Apple singing a troubling version of “Pure Imagination,” reincarnated from the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie.
Throughout his workday the Scarecrow, well, he never actually works, but instead encounters all sorts of farming misconduct from conveyor belts carrying 100% Beef-ish something or others to robots injecting chickens with, dare I say it -hormones! Peering over the Scarecrows shoulder, this really got to me, innocent round-eyed cows are trembling while contained in dark tight boxes with mysterious tubes coming and going.
Here, see it with your eyes:
This is not a soft message to the industrial farming establishment. Rather it’s a direct shot right at factory farming’s underbelly. Chipotle shouts institutional farming’s transgressions from a billowing chimney stack.
Looking on the bright side perhaps this film could be repurposed leaning towards a gentle message that actually makes me want to eat again.
Leave out the evil-doing factory and all its belly-flopping shenanigans. We know this stuff goes on. We just don’t want to KNOW it so clearly.
Even Niman Ranch, applauded for their animal-welfare standards, has to kill those lovable critters that grow fat without hormones in roomy pens, chugging clean spring water and roaming freely like the deer and antelope. I digressed.
Start the video right when the Scarecrow enters his home and begins to “Cultivate a Better World”. He discovers that luminous red pepper (how Hitchcockian) and being the career-minded little bugger, eventually opens a fresh vegetable stand snugged (more like squashed) between two towering skyscraper-ish buildings. I’d probably leave out those encroaching buildings, going more for the positive twist on things. It’s still fun and gets a nice clean organic message across.
Yes?
But would this get your attention?
What actually gets my attention is the genius behind integrating a game app with the advertising. In a Candy Crush kind of way, Chipotle’s ad team could move towards engendering advertising: Make The Scarecrow, with his trembling stick-body and unalloyed obsidian eyes, move into our hearts and souls as a purity spokesman. His sincerity and altruism ring true. Make him the center of all that’s good and edible. Then I could eat again! Chipotle is in the restaurant business after all.
