“How Do You Like Your Eggs?" The American Egg Board, the marketing arm for U.S. egg farmers, poses this simple question to Americans through its latest marketing campaign — a relaunch of the brand’s trademark “Incredible Egg,” explains Ashley Richardson, senior director of marketing communications for the American Egg Board.
The idea behind the new campaign is to break away from the ordinary and hopefully entice consumers through a humorous and light-hearted matter while still giving informative information that may increase popularity of egg consumption. “Deviled, baked or even as a cloud, the latest campaign from The Incredible Egg seeks to help consumers explore the many ways and occasions to enjoy eggs,” Richardson said.
The campaign includes pairing colorful characters and personalities with egg dishes, such as a nun who loves deviled eggs or Santa, who of course prefers his eggs nogged, she explained. Their hopes were to launch the campaign before the winter holidays to hopefully offer recipe suggestions that would increase sales during the holiday season.
Due to egg popularity consumers have found creative ways of eating them for years. “They (eggs) can be deviled, baked, minced, even grilled or smoked,” said Richardson. The Egg Board really wanted a way to showcase those different variations in a way that would grab an audience’s attention.
Forming the new message and targeting its audience
With the goal of brand awareness also generating egg sales, the original plan was to the launch the campaign during Easter of 2018. However, those formulating the plan saw a window of opportunity to increase sales during the winter holiday season by launching the campaign then. This is a time of year that the National Egg Board hasn’t previously used in marketing strategy.
“We challenged our new lead advertising agency Energy BBDO to launch the campaign that won them the American Egg Board’s business in July by November. This was a challenge that we issued late August/early September and to see the campaign come to life so quickly has been one more the rewarding projects from my career,” said Richardson.
The average person consumes 276 eggs per year, which is of course is a driving point to the new campaign. Studies have shown that eggs are currently a breakfast staple in consumers mind, she explained.
Understanding the campaign audience is also crucial for campaign success.
“We also know that millennials are much more experimental with their food, reporting use of eggs on foods other than breakfast foods at a higher rate than non-millennials,” Richardson said. They will also focus on generating contact with multi-cultural markets, especially Hispanics. A report titled Mintel’s Hispanic’s Cooking Enthusiasts from 2015 said Hispanics are accountable for consuming 58 percent of annual growth in egg consumption, she noted.
Pushing the message and measuring success
The Incredible Egg, the new campaign and an array of egg recipes are available on the Incredible Egg website. However, they can also be checked out on various forms of social media.
“With a digital campaign, every aspect is measurable, so we’ve already been optimizing the campaign according to performance and will continue to do so. We’ll have additional campaign portraits that will launch in 2018,” she said.
The hopes are that the campaign will go beyond educating people about eggs and motivate consumers to use eggs more often in various ways.
“The Incredible Egg has been a cultural icon for more than 40 years. And with 90 percent penetration among American households (Source: research by Dr. Ron Ward), we have a unique opportunity to reactivate the Incredible Egg brand in a bold new way that resonates with today’s consumer,” she concluded.
