Chipotle once again impressed at Cannes Lions this year, winning two Golds and a Grand Prix in PR for its Scarecrow short film that offers a commentary on the current state of farming and encourages a move back to fresher, more natural approach to food.
The three minute film tells a sad tale and a look at the brain science behind the ads shows that despite its length viewers are engaged to the end, but that the subtle branding works better than the overt push for the mobile game.
As part of our exclusive series of neuro-analyses of the winning ads at Cannes this year in partnership with Neuro Insight, we took a look at how viewers' brains respond to Chipotle's scarecrow.
Chilling Chipotle
The short-film, Scarecrow, by Chipotle is haunting and emotionally provoking. With a remake of a song “Pure Imagination” from 1971’s Willy Wonka as the soundtrack, the film shows a dystopian world, where, instead of scarecrows protecting the food from crows, the scarecrows are being controlled by crows and, in the process, are ruining the food they once protected.
In the film we see a scarecrow reluctantly arriving at work in the factory, whose job seems to be hiding the factory’s truth from the public’s eye. While he moves through his day we see him grow sadder and sadder with the state the animals exist in; chickens being injected with, what one would assume is, antibiotics and cows being milked like machines. When he finally gets home to his farm he looks around and realises that he can “cultivate a better world” with his own grown produce.
Key Moments Say a Lot
With minimal branding, does The Scarecrow’s film do enough to promote Chipotle and its game, or do viewers just remember the cow with the most forlorn eyes imaginable? Neuro-Insight’s Memory Encoding Time-series can help to unravel this question, starting with male viewers:
The film receives a strong, yet highly variable Memory response from male viewers. It starts off with high levels of Memory Encoding and manages to sustain these levels for most of the film – which is a noteworthy achievement considering the length of this film/ad.
The Most Crucial 3 Seconds in 3 Minutes
The theme of wholesome freshness, in contrast to the dystopian world of factory farming is well conveyed by the scene of the freshly picked red pepper. This scene is not only strongly encoded into memory but is also associated with high Engagement and High Emotional Intensity. The way these crucial components align is a clear confirmation that this aspect of the key message has hit home in a powerful way. Not only is this moment the most important symbolic point in the whole story…it is precisely the moment that ‘implicitly’ links the theme to the Chipotle brand via the red pepper, a key feature of the Chipotle logo.
In stark contrast, the film’s final branding showing The Scarecrow game performs below average as well as Chipotle’s very final branding, which doesn’t make it to Neuro-Insight’s Effectiveness Benchmark of 0.7. So while the males respond strongly to the theme of the ad, the low level of memory encoding in the scene that introduces the game suggests that males are less likely to act on the call to action to download the game. How does this compare to the female audience?
Females See the Darker Side
From the chart above we can see that males and females had similar responses, on average, to the film. Men finding it lighter & more engaging, whilst women had a stronger emotional response to the film. The biggest gender difference is on Neuro-Insight’s Approach/Withdraw measure, showing that women had a much stronger negative emotional (Withdrawal) response to the film than male viewers. A closer, second by second, Memory Encoding Analysis unlocks more about women’s response to the short-film.
Overall, The Scarecrow’s message, that factory farming is bad, has been communicated effectively to both males and females, with females responding most strongly to the dystopian and depressing theme, whilst males get the ‘Ah Ha’ moment...and move on. This short film shows that, in this instance, Cause marketing has been effective, especially in the female audience.
We've also looked Volvo's Jean-Claud Van Damme fuelled Epic Split, the Harvey Nichols' 'Sorry I Spent it on Myself' ad, and Lurpak's Creative Effectiveness Lion winning Weave Your Magic ad, and JWT's Chrissy Amphlett film for Cancer Council.
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