by Amanda Smith, Associate Editor
Super Bowl Sunday is known for its commercials, but Chipotle is upping the TV stakes.
Continued promotion of its anti-agriculture agenda has placed Chipotle in the TV market. The chain restaurant will drop $1 million to air a four-part miniseries revolving around "the ills of production agriculture" on the TV streaming service, Hulu. The goal of the comedy series is to take a "satirical look at large-scale farming," noted company executives.
Producing each episode will carry a price tag of $250,000. The series, which features actor Ray Wise, airs February 17, 2014.
This isn't the company's first stab at conventional agriculture, though. Over the past two years, the organization, with a stock market value over $15 billion, has released two animated films on YouTube. Combined, these videos have had 20 million-plus views. We discussed these campaigns in Hoard's Dairyman Intel in late September . Interestingly, a New York Times' article on the miniseries noted, "In part, Chipotle's advertising is a continued effort to dissociate itself from McDonald's, which owned a controlling stake in the company for roughly eight years before divesting it in 2006."
Taking a different tact, McDonald's recent advertising efforts have been focused on celebrating what the U.S. dairy farmer does for the nation each day.
According to the New York Times' article, the premise of the series is to "Tell the story of an idealistic boy who falls for a girl whose father, Mr. Marshall, works for farmers planning to raise cows on petroleum pellets, a move meant to increase the food supply by lowering costs."
The content is produced by the fast-food chain and New York-based production company Piro. Farmed and Dangerous' trailer can be viewed here. The company also has high hopes of producing additional episodes to complement the series.
