As many of you know from Steve Baird’s post earlier this week – Ola Crapola! – we attended the FUSE 2014 Brand Strategy & Design Conference in the Windy City. It was fun to hang out with creative design and brand people for the last couple of days.
The presentation from the Voice Lead from Chipotle was especially memorable. One of the ad campaigns “Farmed and Dangerous” involved a soap opera type series promoting Chipotle. There was a big “bad” company that was feeding its cows oil pellets (somehow resulting in more profits). Not the healthiest choice. In addition, there was an unfortunate side effect of exploding cows. The good guy farmer named “Chip” (short for Chipotle – good marketing) was going to expose this unhealthy phenomenon; check out the video here.
In addition, Chipotle partnered with Oscar winning directors Brandon Oldenburg and Limbert Fabian, along with singer Fiona Apple to make a viral ad/short about a scarecrow with a similar theme titled “The Scarecrow“.
As the Huffington Post explains: “The original ad left us feeling all the feelings thanks to one extremely sad scarecrow working in one extremely disturbing food factory. Until he discovers the pleasures of fresh food, that is.”
My friends Aaron Keller and Kitty Hart of Capsule joined us at FUSE. Throughout the conference, they blogged about the presentations.
Empathy and meaningful connections were themes in many of the presentations we saw throughout the conference. The following quote from Maya Angelou resonated: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This is an important quote to keep in mind when branding, selling, designing, and indeed, transcends most careers. As a litigator, I know that it is important to connect with a jury and leave them with a good feeling toward my client. How does empathy impact your career?