To commemorate the recent holiday season, Chick-fil-A launched a multichannel campaign aimed at encouraging consumers to give the gift of something intangible—time. The campaign, which debuted via an animated commercial during NBC’s broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and ran through November and December, was based on the findings of a national survey commissioned by Chick-fil-A and conducted by The Bantam Group—a company that performs research for branding, communications and product development—which indicated that 73 percent of consumers want to spend more time with the people they love, and 93 percent said quality time is the most important part of creating memories during the holidays. In the spirit of giving—and giving consumers more of what they want—Chick-fil-A focused on the concept of time, rather than its brands or products.
Along with the commercial, Chick-fil-A opened The Time Shop, a pop-up shop in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, which was open from December 4-17, along with an ecommerce store. In both the brick-and-mortar and ecommerce stores, consumers, age 18 and older, were invited to create custom gift cards in exchange for time; examples of “time cards” sent via the site included: “two hours of making grandma’s doughnuts,” “12 hours of movie nights” and “four hours of teaching you to ride a bike.” To send a time card, ecommerce site visitors were asked to provide the recipient’s name and the sender’s name and email address, coupled with a short description of a “together time activity,” and the number of hours. Once complete, the site permitted users to print the card to distribute by hand, or, if sent prior to December 10, the cards were mailed directly to recipients.
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Danielle Renda is associate editor of PPB.