Connecting with College Football Fans
Concurrent with the beginning of our search for a new advertising agency, we recognized a new opportunity to build a national brand beyond the South and Southwest, an opportunity that fit Chick-fil-A’s and Truett’s personalities perfectly. This opportunity would lead us all the way to the College Football Playoff. And it began with women’s professional golf. Yes, golf.
Truett’s friend J. T. Williams wanted to bring an LPGA event to his Eagle’s Landing golf community south of Atlanta, and he needed sponsors. Truett wanted Chick-fil-A to help. I wasn’t sure the brand was big enough to take on an event of that magnitude, but we looked into the possibilities and decided to try to make it work for the LPGA, Chick-fil-A, and Atlanta’s Southside.
The first LPGA tournament that Chick-fil-A sponsored in 1992 was our opportunity to “activate” our food and people and to engage our vendor partners. Extending our hospitality beyond the restaurants to the golf course introduced the brand to many of the patrons for the first time. The event was in the heart of Chick-fil-A territory, just twenty miles from our home office, but it attracted visitors, pro-am participants, media, and LPGA players from around the United States and the world. Many of them had never heard of Chick-fil-A. In the process, we were learning how to produce and leverage sponsored events. It was also scheduled to be part of ESPN’s coverage of the LPGA.
Within a few years, the Chick-fil-A Charity Championship hosted by Nancy Lopez became one of the most popular and charitable stops on the LPGA Tour, in no small part due to Nancy’s support and personal involvement. Our success with this event encouraged us to investigate other potential sports partnerships. With more than five hundred restaurants in more than twenty markets, we could consider an event that would give us some bigger national exposure, or at least significant regional visibility. We looked at NASCAR, the PGA, Major League Baseball, and the NFL, and in every one of those possibilities we saw audience waste or inefficiency and the requirement for activating on Sundays—a nonstarter with all our stores closed on Sundays.
We studied independent research and learned that Chick-fil-A customers were 40 percent more likely to watch a college football game on TV than were customers of other fast-food restaurants. We also learned that people actually attending college football games were six times more likely to eat at Chick-fil-A than at other fast-food restaurants. An amazing demographics fit. We felt we had to find a way to take advantage of this clear and powerful connection. Efficient, passionate fans, no Sunday issues, appointment TV.
On December 31, 1993, Dianne and I had a New Year’s Eve date to the Peach Bowl, Clemson versus Kentucky. (If you love college football, it can be a date!) Sitting in the upper deck looking around the Georgia Dome, I saw several thousand empty seats. But the atmosphere was great. The game had come a long way from its founding by the Lion’s Club of Atlanta in 1968 to its near extinction in the mid-1980s. The game had been played outdoors, first at Georgia Tech’s Grant Field and then at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, often in bad weather. In 1985, fewer than thirty thousand fans sat in a cold, driving rainstorm to watch Army beat Illinois. CBS pulled its contract, and the game itself was at risk because it barely met the NCAA minimum requirement for local ticket sales. The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce then took over management of the game and convinced major corporations of its importance to the community. Delta, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and Georgia Power all became sponsors. The Georgia Dome opened in 1992, and the game moved indoors. A year later, Dianne and I watched from the upper deck.
“I’m amazed this game doesn’t have a title sponsor,” I said. “If nothing else, the right title sponsor could help them fill this building.”
“Well, why don’t you do it?” she said, meaning Chick-fil-A, of course.
She’d known what I was thinking. Why not Chick-fil-A? The Peach Bowl had virtually zero audience waste for us, not only in terms of demographics and geography, but also on-site brand activation; and it had tentacles that could move us into college towns, college alumni associations, athletic departments—unbelievable relationships that Operators could partner with in their communities. The timing was almost perfect, as we had just started licensing Chick-fil-A restaurants on college campuses, and an affiliation with college football might add energy and momentum to those opportunities.
The majority of our restaurants were geographically in the crosshairs of the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Southeastern Conference, great college football territory, and coincidentally, the Peach Bowl had penned a long-term agreement with the ACC and the SEC to host two of their teams in the Georgia Dome every year.
“Of course,” I said. “You’re right, babe.” And for the rest of the game I sat back and considered the possibilities.
The following week, I met with David Salyers and other members of our team and shared my thoughts. We weren’t thinking national at that time. Seventy percent of our stores were in the footprint of the SEC and ACC, so we were thinking about the teams coming to this ballgame as well as the students, fans, and alumni watching on ESPN.
Even before presenting the idea to Truett, we were following his lead. Truett had an innate, intuitive sense for what he wanted the Chick-fil-A brand to be. Implicit in that, he could discern what fit and what didn’t fit. I had studied him carefully, and after fifteen years in the business, I had become a big fan of using data to inform decisions but knew not to let it make the decisions for us, particularly when dealing with a brand attempting to genuinely connect with our customers. “Informed intuition,” as I liked to call it, provided a sense of what might add brand value for Chick-fil-A, based on both facts and emotional “fit.” College football hit the bull’s-eye for both.
And then there was energy. Energy attracted Truett, especially the energy of young people. He was fine around the adults in the restaurants, but he gravitated first toward children, always asking, “What do the Cows say?” Then he turned to the teenagers working behind the counters. When he was well into his eighties, he still connected with their energy. He wanted passion and energy in and around Chick-fil-A, and since college football is the epitome of energy, the connection between Chick-fil-A and college sports was a natural extension of Truett’s personality. And an added bonus: I love the game too!
We decided to pursue the possibility of becoming the title sponsor of the game. Robert Dale Morgan, who was the Peach Bowl’s executive director, and two board members (Albert Tarica and Bob Coggins) listened to our sponsorship idea, but their response was lukewarm at first. They were particularly concerned by the possibility of title sponsor turnover, changing the name of the game after two or three years, which was common in the bowl business at that time.
They were not yet familiar, however, with one of the most important tenets of Chick-fil-A’s culture: commitment. Truett Cathy and Chick-fil-A didn’t make short-term decisions with Operators, employees, suppliers, or corporate partners. After we did our homework and made a commitment, we were all-in with every relationship. The net result: create a long-term, win-win situation for both parties.
“What if we guarantee you a minimum three-year deal with an option to renew for another three years?” I asked. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to renew it. We don’t like it, we don’t have to renew. In other words, how about a potential six-year deal?” Now they were listening.
That meeting was the first of many over several months as the bowl’s leadership grew more comfortable with the idea and we negotiated a fee schedule and related rights.
We agreed to a lower fee the first year that would grow over time, mirroring Chick-fil-A’s anticipated growth. We also committed to buy the ten commercial spots on ESPN that the bowl was contracted to sell. Our first national television.
“We’ll help you sell out the game and promote viewership,” I said. We didn’t want to put the Chick-fil-A name on anything that was not a total success. We saw the bowl as a potential Chick-fil-A brand asset. Robert Dale became convinced and advocated for the deal and co-branded marketing effort.
After negotiating most of the key components of a deal with the Peach Bowl, I was ready to lay out the opportunity before the nine-member Chick-fil-A executive committee. This was an expensive, long-term commitment, and as a business, we hadn’t fully made the philosophical transition from selling chicken to building the Chick-fil-A brand. There was strong sentiment that we might be too early.
But my philosophy was that you don’t start promoting a regional brand when you are a regional brand. Rather, you start promoting a regional brand before you want to be a regional brand. Likewise, you start promoting yourself as a national brand before you’re a national brand.
At the meeting where the executive committee had to make a decision, I explained the deal and said, “We need to understand that I believe we don’t do this deal unless we’re in it for the long haul. Because we’re not going to build brand affiliation—we’re not going to make the bowl and Chick-fil-A a new ‘brand’—unless we make a long-term commitment. If we aren’t willing to go on this ride and assume it’s at least six years, and see how it performs for the business, then don’t support it. Our investment cost will grow year by year, and hopefully the size of the business will grow proportionately so it won’t financially constrain us. But, obviously, I can’t guarantee that.”
“This is a brand investment,” I said, “doing for the Operators what they cannot do for themselves. Only the home office can do this.”
They were not all convinced. But we were at a point where we had to give the bowl our decision. So the executive committee voted—four in favor and four opposed. Truett had listened but not voted.
Then Jimmy Collins, who had supported the deal, turned to him and said, “Well, Truett, what do you think?”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” he said. “I think we ought to do it.”
On December 31, 1996, Truett stood at midfield with the captains from LSU and Clemson to announce that the Chick-fil-A and Peach Bowl partnership would start the next season. Our journey to becoming a national brand had just taken an important step. At the same time, the Richards Group was expanding the Cow campaign. The Chick-fil-A brand would never be the same.
To get ready for the first Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, we brought in George Hirthler’s agency to help us brand the new partnership. I had admired his work for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, so when it was time to create a brand look for the bowl, George and his team were a perfect choice.
After our first Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, the 2000 Atlanta Super Bowl host committee recruited and hired Robert Dale to become its executive director. The Peach Bowl committee, in turn, hired Gary Stokan, who played basketball and was later an assistant coach at North Carolina State. Gary had worked in corporate sports management at Adidas and Converse and had owned and operated two sports marketing companies. He and his new team, and our team, began meeting together at least monthly. A joint brand journey had begun.
Then we expanded our exposure with college athletics by becoming a corporate sponsor with the SEC and the ACC. That gave us access to all their events and the respective fans who attended. Engaging personally with fans at the SEC Championships and ACC Championships in football and basketball became a great opportunity for us to make connections on the ground, face-to-face. But after a few years, the conferences told us we couldn’t activate directly with fans through our food and people the way we had been.
So we pulled out of some of the conferences’ events and used that money to supplement a new deal with CBS’s SEC college football schedule. About the same time, we were reviewing the impact of the Chick-fil-A Charity Championship with Nancy Lopez, the LPGA event we had sponsored since 1992. The event, we believed, could take off if we could make some changes, including moving it to the East Lake Golf Club, which became the permanent home of the PGA Tour Championship in 2004. When we were unable to make traction with our desired changes, we realized that we needed to move away from the LPGA event after an eleven-year run. Again, we used that money to supplement the advertising commitment on CBS and ESPN. We were able to start buying portions of the whole college football season with both networks. Our awareness numbers responded strongly, and Operators said they felt this new visibility was positively impacting their sales. Same-store sales were growing.
We wanted to be more than just a pay-for-play advertiser, and the creative team at the Richards Group was always looking for new ways to leverage the Cows. One of those possibilities was to convince ESPN and CBS to let us show creative that could run during the game broadcast, not just another thirty-second ad. The Richards Group created and proposed what I call “in-game ditties,” those fun things the Cows like to do, such as present the starting lineups and impact players. They were created in the same spirit and strategy as the ads themselves, and we had to meet the network’s standards for how long they could be on screen and graphically where they came in or went out. But in terms of the flavor and tone, they were an extension of the Cows’ renegade campaign. They were making people smile during the game broadcast.
Why not? This was part of the fun and the nuance of building a brand around emotional value and not just transactional value. We weren’t running commercials to promote any given product or a special price for the next thirty days. We were doing something to make you like Chick-fil-A. Stan Richards often said, “The most enduring brands are the brands that are endearing.”
We had to negotiate prices for those “ditties,” but when CBS’s Verne Lundquist, the Hall of Fame broadcaster, laughed while announcing, “Bring on the Cows,” we knew we’d found another winner. If we could make Verne laugh, that might be better than saying something nice about us. Besides, he had a contagious laugh.
Building Friendships
The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl not only built our brand’s support base but also led to new relationships with athletic directors and coaches that were crucial to our growth in the college football space. Dianne and I built friendships professionally and personally that have stood the test of time.
In 2001, Auburn played North Carolina, and Dianne and I hosted Auburn’s athletic director, David Housel, and his wife, Susan, and head coach Tommy Tuberville and his wife, Susan, at our home for dinner as a respite from the crowds. During the evening, Tommy shared with us the positive influence that his full-time team chaplain, Rev. Chette Williams, had on his players. Historically, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) provided chaplains to work with athletes on high school and college campuses, but Tommy had someone dedicated solely to his Auburn football players. Chette, a former Auburn player, was a father figure, friend, mentor, pastor, and role model for young men who, in many cases, had grown up without a father in their home. Coaches simply didn’t have time to fill all those roles, Tommy explained, and the nature of the coach–player relationship required a certain distance because of the discipline involved.
David explained that because FCA raised money from donors to pay for Chette’s salary, office rent, and expenses, there was no conflict with the Auburn administration. This conversation raised Dianne’s and my interest and spurred our first involvement with and support of FCA, continuing today, even in our family—our son-in-law joined the FCA Atlanta staff in 2015.
Soon after that first dinner, Gary asked if Dianne and I would host another dinner the next year, this time with the head coaches and athletic directors from both schools. We readily agreed, and in 2002, Phillip and Vicky Fulmer, from Tennessee, and Ralph and Gloria Friedgen, from Maryland, joined us for a dinner that became an annual tradition of hosting the opposing coaches, athletic directors, and their wives before the game—away from the competition, distractions, and pressure of the bowl week.
Licensing Chick-fil-A on College Campuses
The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl also supported our expansion of Chick-fil-A’s licensed restaurants onto college campuses. “Licensed” meant we had to work with concession contractors who held the food-service rights on a campus. Those deals came together more easily as we gained greater visibility within college athletics. At this writing, Chick-fil-A has licensed restaurants on more than 250 college and university campuses.
College locations represented an opportunity to develop a future customer franchise for the brand by potentially exposing Chick-fil-A to people who otherwise had never experienced it.
Initially, because of problems he’d had with his early licensing experience with the Chick-fil-A sandwich, Truett had reservations with the concept, which turns over the production of our product to another company. But our team, led by Jack Sentell and Barry White, designed a model where a local Chick-fil-A Operator was directly involved in training and verifying the quality of the licensed operation. Those locations became principally about building the Chick-fil-A brand and creating trial, while also creating another income stream for the partnered Operator from the license fee. Later the program expanded even further, to include licensed partners in hospitals and airports.