ATLANTA — Customers who come to any Chick-fil-A restaurant July 11 fully dressed as a cow will receive a free Chick-fil-A Meal as part of the company's fourth annual Cow Appreciation Day.
The meal includes an entree of choice, a side item and a beverage. Customers partially dressed in cow attire, such as a cow-spotted scarf, will receive a complimentary entree.
Last year's event drew thousands of customers across the country dressed in cow-themed costumes, ranging from simple cow-spotted T-shirts to full cow suits, including homemade sandwich boards with personalized renditions of Chick-fil-A's "Eat Mor Chikin" Cow messages.
The Chick-fil-A restaurant in Hendersonville, N.C., hosted 350 cow-spotted customers from summer camps, daycares and preschools. Another group of ambitious college students — self-dubbed "The Herd" — set out on a "cattle drive" from Knoxville, Tenn., to Atlanta, Ga., on a mission to visit 30 Chick-fil-A restaurants in one day.
For the past 13 years, the renegade "Eat Mor Chikin" Cows have entertained consumers with their desperate, self-preserving antics in an effort to convert beef eaters into chicken fans.
The Chick-fil-A Cows and the "Eat Mor Chikin" campaign have enjoyed such widespread public success that the chain has turned the theme into a fully integrated marketing program. In addition to clever roadside billboards, the "Eat Mor Chikin" Cows are the focal point of Chick-fil-A's in-store point-of-purchase materials, promotions, radio and TV advertising, and clothing and merchandise sales.
In 2007, the Chick-fil-A "Eat Mor Chikin" Cows were recognized as one of America's most popular advertising icons in a public vote sponsored by Advertising Week and became the newest members of New York's Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame. A permanent banner to recognize this achievement will be unveiled on Madison Avenue in 2008.
The chain's sales have more than quintupled since the Cows' first full year as unofficial icons for the brand, from $502 million in 1995 to more than $2.64 billion in 2007.
