Watch the ad here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos
The use of advertisement servers as the foundation for modern television. Clearly, without advertisement, television would be a much different arena. Of the many types of advertisement, some of the most impactful ads center around themes of cultural identity, pride, and integrity.
Chipotle released a stop-motion ad based that centered around the values that Chipotle has as a brand. Titled "Back to the STart", Chipotle aimed to establish itself as an honorable brand by showing a pig farmer giving way to industrialization only to return back to good ole' fashioned farming. See below:
Chipotle drew in quite a large audience with their "Back to the Start". Using classical conditioning, the ad uses stimulus such as Willie Nelson, Coldplay, modern cinematography, and work ethic as it establishes an emotionally invoking sentiment in an unrelated brand. As the commercial nears the end, the pig farmer realizes the dangers of abandoning ethic, and exhibits pride in his work.
However, Chipotle orchestrates this entire ad without presenting an evidence. They don't say their products are chemical-free or American-grown. In fact, when you consider Chipotle as a subsidiary of the McDonalds corporation, the evidence would seemingly show Chipotle to the contrary seeing as McDonalds is known for their additives and mass production. Furthermore, Chipotle was created in response to trending local restaurants. This means that the local businesses that bought homegrown, healthy ingredients were put out of business by franchise operations underselling the local businesses.
What do you think of a Chipotle misrepresenting itself? Should deliberately vague ads such as this one be allowed to run without some truth to their advertisement?
While I am a Chipotle fanatic and get around 1/3 of my calories from their delicious burritos, I absolutely agree with your sentiment that there should be truth in advertising. The success of the consumer choice (and by extension the success of capitalism as a system for improving our lives) rests on the ability of the consumer to make an informed choice; consumers must know what they are buying if they are to have the ability to buy the product they really want and thus create demand for the best products.
I think Chipotle generally has a different target audience than McDonalds, which I suspect is why Chipotle used Willie Nelson, Coldplay and work ethic as stimuli in their ad even under the same ownership.
I think your blog brings up the question of how much truth in advertising we can realistically demand. If we demand none, we will get none, if we demand complete truth in advertising, and Chipotle showed or explained the entire process of food production for their restaurants in their ads, how chickens, pigs and cows live, suffer, die, and have their flesh and organs converted into the product, the ads would be five minutes long and the market would disappear overnight. Too much truth in advertising and evidence presented could sink their business, and they thus have an economic incentive to misrepresent themselves if given the chance.
It's much like how McDonalds was a sponsor of the Olympics when it's not a big secret that their food is total crap for your body. Without some sort of punishment for not telling the truth, a business that advertises its lack of ethics or sticks to its ethics while competing against companies that are allowed to be unethical and lie about it stands no chance when the people are uninformed or are driven more by price than by ethics.