I’ve always had a fascination with marketing and admire the warped and neurotic minds of ad agencies’ geniuses. They cast their seeds to the winds hoping for a fertile field or at least a crack in the sidewalk in which their idea can take root. It is more an affliction than a profession.

CHICK-FIL-A

There is no doubt that the dairymen have had a runaway success with their “Got Milk?” and milk moustache advertising campaigns. But the latest promotion idea that’s caught my eye is Chick-fil-A.

It’s a fast-food chain specializing in chicken sandwiches. The pitchman . . . or woman . . . or bovine, actually, is a holstein cow. They feature eye-catching billboards with lifelike cows climbing the sign graffitiing it with messages like “Eat more chicken. All in favor say, ‘Moo!’ ”

I’ve always sort of enjoyed the internecine competition between edible species.

Beef, because it is the priciest and most distinguished of the products, is usually the object of the slings and arrows of the other, no less nutritious but less prestigious commodities. Beef’s advertising reflects the almost military approach to its promotion. Big, solid, no nonsense. Even the most remembered beef ad, Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”, was a little heavy-handed.

Pork has a lock on sausage, bacon, and barbecued ribs— fare produced by an industry that can laugh at itself a little because it has no serious competition. But then they tried to move in on chicken’s “Light and Lean” territory by claiming to be the “Other White Meat.” Unfortunately, they are saddled with a name that conjures up images of oversize linebackers gnawing ham hocks. Think how much easier it would be to sell pork had it been called swan or ocelot or dolphin. I can’t even think of a single vehicle named after pork to enhance its image. We’ve got Dodge Rams, but no Buick Boars, Pontiac Pigs, or Saturn Sows. So pork is stuck with its succulence as its best-selling feature.

Turkey, too, has got the same “name” problem. It should have been named something befitting its exalted position on our holiday tables: “I’m going to slice the Suava Royal. Who would like white meat?”

An unfortunate, difficult-to-market name has kept many other commodities from becoming regular American table fare: anteaters, for instance, chiggers, and Saint-John’s-wort.

But chicken started at the bottom and has pulled itself to top as the most consumed meat in the United States. The industry hasn’t depended on scintillating advertising. They don’t worry that the name of their product has synonyms like cowardly, scrawny, pimpled, or fowl. They just have a good, cheap, nutritious product that tastes like whatever you put on it.

And now they have enlisted cows to help sell Chick-fil-A. The ultimate indignity. Next thing you know, they’ll have celebrity cows with a mouthful of feathers and egg on their face, saying, “Got Chicken?”