In Stuart Elliott’s article, Chipotle Returns to Animation to Support Sustainable Farming, he brings to light the success of Chipotle’s efforts in using a video, The Scarecrow, to evoke support for sustainable farming. With 5 million views, the video is successfully uses music and sad visuals to appeal to viewers.
Chipotle is known for its motto, Food with Integrity. It supports organic vegetables and naturally raised animals. Just last week, Chipotle and the CAA Marketing division of the Creative Artists Agency and Moonbot Studios collaborated together to create a commercial about the food industry and commercial farming. Their goal is to make people more aware about what we’re truly eating and how right now, we’re all like the mindless scarecrows at the lunchroom but we can choose to change.
The video starts off with a scarecrow, he lives in work much like ours, incredibly rich in technology, with plenty of factories and commercial farming. There are images of unknown meat mixtures being produced in a factory. As well as, images of chickens and cows being fattened and plumped up with unknown vaccines and substances. Overall the visuals that the video shows are quite terrifying and sad. The scarecrow looks lost and saddened by whats happening around him, until at last he has an epiphany! He decides to stray away from the toxic foods that other scarecrows are mindlessly eating. Instead he grows vegetables in his own gardens and makes his own food naturally. The audience can clearly link that the scarecrow is similar to the founder of Chipotle. Just like the founder of Chipotle, the scarecrow in the video wants to share his food and knowledge with other scarecrows by setting up his own food stand.
I believe this video is extremely successful and carries out the purpose of persuading viewers to support sustainable farming. I believe that the music played an extremely important factor to make the video successful. The song, Pure Imagination, has extremely happy lyrics. Some lines from the song consist of:
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
But even though these words are happy, the singer sounds sad singing them. Like she’s sad of the environment around her, she doesn’t like this “paradise” and she wants to imagine another world, one with food made from sustainable farming and naturally raised animals. The dreary and sad music is probably my favorite part of the video.
I believe Chipotle is doing a good thing by creating this video. Personally, I did not know much about Chipotle or it’s point of view before this article. I feel like they’re different from most fast food restaurants and are taking strides to get the word out so consumers can choose what kinds of restaurants they want to support. In this way maybe more places will opt to buy organic vegetables and naturally raised animals. Through this video I noticed how closely businesses and the arts are connected. In fact most advertisements and commercials are pieces of arts varying from music, visual, dancing and theatre. Not only does this make advertisements more entertaining but also more persuasive.
How do you feel about the video? Did it evoke any certain emotions from you? Does this make you want to go out now and grab some Chipotle or do you think this is all just a cheap trick by Chipotle to make other restaurants look bad? Are business and arts that closely connected?
I heard about this ad from a friend who saw it on a shared thread on facebook. I think that in itself shows how successful this campaign was. The internet world is still buzzing as the video is being passed around, nearing 6 million views on youtube. (One website called it “Oscar worthy.”) I think it owes its success to its unique-ness as an ad. I’ve rarely seen ads like this before, and by rarely I mean never. Even though its much longer than a traditional commercial, it grabs the viewers attention and shares the company’s values without even showing a logo. Also, it has a such a genuine and simple method of telling a story, and can appeal to people of all ages. Even better, you don’t even need to understand english to get it. If someone showed me this without the last second where they show the logo, I would have thought that it was one of the short films they play before a Pixar movie- its completely genius. I wouldn’t be surprised if other companies start to take the hint and move towards other types of ads and create stronger internet bases for their brand.
I feel like this video is truly universal. Because it sends its messages through music and images, people all over the world of any age are able to understand the appreciate what Chipotle wants to express. Compared to for example, a McDonald’s advertisement on a Big Mac, I find this video more effective in urging consumers to switch over to Chipotle. However, I do not think that Chipotle is trying to make other fast food companies look bad because fast food has been around for a long time. Most people know how unhealthy the food is but it all comes down to whether or not they care enough about their health to make a change.
This also reminded me of a book I read of Michael Pollan’s, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. It highlights how our meaning of “food” has changed and evolved from when there were hunter-gatherers to now. It really made me think of how commercialized food has become. If you have spare time, I highly recommend you to read it!
I definitely agree with your take on the article as well as the video. Thank you for sharing that video as well. I felt it was really powerful, and as a fan of the food of Chipotle, I was happy to see that they are in support of making people aware of what is the “false paradise” as you touched upon. This does make me want to get some Chipotle actually, though i was planning to even before the video. Your post is right along the lines of how I would have responded to the article and video. I know that Emily already recommended it above, but I am actually doing an essay on Michael Pollan’s NY Times article, “Unhappy Meals” in Writing. I think the video was beautifully done and plus I love the music of Willy Wonka and that song. But anyways, the video was extremely successful in invoking a lot of emotion in me, and ultimately, that’s what the people at Chipotle were looking to do, but I don’t think it was a “cheap trick” at all. Usually, I don’t see the business-arts connection, but now I see where your coming from with drawing that link. Also, with Halloween coming up, I think the video was perfectly timed (with the scarecrow and all). Go Chipotle! Good for them.
My first thought when watching the video was, “Wow, what eerie music…seems almost creepy.” Nevertheless, the video was extremely intriguing and was quite emotional for me. I felt really sad when the scarecrow saw the cows being locked up. Like you said, I was never fully aware of how Chipotle viewed food. I just knew they had great burritos and advertised things like “all natural meat” or something, but I never really paid attention to it because most food industries advertise the same thing. The video makes me really respect Chipotle even more now. The video gives a great message: to stop being puppets and eating “all natural” food when that “all natural” food is actually fattened chickens or locked up cows. I do believe business and arts are connected. The cute animation of the video was a great marketing strategy since it made it seem like I was watching a movie, which hooked me in more than a real-life video probably would have.
This blog seems like a continuation of my English class. Eng 2100 is all about the nutritional value of food and all the disillusionment the world knows as truth. We had to watch this video called “ king Corn,” and really if this article interested you so would love this movie. It is the adventure of two college graduates whose great grandparents happened to be from the same little town in the mid-west. These great grandparents worked in the corn industry. These two men buy an acre of land and for a year they cultivate and nurture this acre of corn. Once they harvested the corn they followed its journey into the cells of our hair. We are made of corn today. That corn that is engineered is fed to cows to fatten them up, it is also the main ingredient for most carbohydrate products, and sugary drinks/ candy. These cows are then killed/ butchered and end up at Mcdonalds in your big mac. Over-time if you are a big eater, actually not just a big-eater, or just don’t consume only organic and whole foods, this corn ends up in your hair.
When I watched the video it was a painful occurrence for me. I ¬¬associate with that song chocolate and Willie Wonka. This video actually broke my heart just now. Music is a big deal to me in movies because it really sways your emotions. The voice and lyrics to this background music is shattering. Hearing that song while seeing robotic birds with red daemon eyes actually scarred me.
As someone who works at Chipotle, I just had to read this article! To answer your question, THIS IS NOT JUST A CHEAP TRICK! When I first applied to Chipotle, I was surprised that everything that they claim, FWI and high standards, is completely true. Chipotle is trying to change the way people view fast food. I also believe that Chipotle is awesome for creating this video. It sends out a strong message to consumers and Chipotle’s competitors. Another aspect that I think separates Chipotle and its competitors is the fact that they don’t advertise on television. I always see advertisements for Panera and other fast food restaurants, but Chipotle is never one of them.
This video is magnificent. The colors, music, and symbolism made this a terrific piece of art. I felt goosebumps all throughout the video. The message it is trying to convey is also very convincing. Whenever I eat fast food, I like to see the methods the staff uses to prepare the food. My local Chipotle restaurant holds the highest standards. The staff prepares the food just five feet in front of a customer. I saw the cook grilling fresh pieces of chicken and fajita vegetables. It was a wonderful sight compared to seeing a simple reheating of a frozen beef patty.
I clicked on your review simply out of curiosity. I saw that you referenced Chipotle and I wasn’t sure what a Mexican chain restaurant had to do with art. But this video made me rethink how I blindly accept the word ‘natural’ that is stamped on all of our food products today. The animation in the video was great and the storyline was truly moving. I’m not exactly sure how they managed to fit so much emotion into a three minute video but as I was watching I felt real pity for the scarecrow and disgust at his society.
My favorite part was probably the music; how they ironically took a classic song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the one from the amazing room where everything is edible) and used it to shame us about our food apathy. I never knew how committed Chipotle was to sustainability, so now every time I go get a burrito I can feel a little better about the fact that it costs ten dollars.