Creative Marketing: CBS Uses “Egg-Vertising” to Print TV Slogans Onto Eggs

Creative marketing is often the best type of marketing.

Even if your creative marketing campaign “fails”, people will still talk about it. Does that still make it a failure?

Such is the case with a CBS advertising campaign from a few years ago. In 2006, CBS printed logos and slogans for its TV shows onto 35 million eggs.

CBS used an advanced laser etching process during printing and “published” the eggs between September and October.

CBS copywriting experts created a number of egg-related slogans for the eggs. An egg which advertised “CSI”, for example, had “Crack the case on CBS” printed on the side. Another egg featured “Scramble to win on CBS” for “The Amazing Race” and an egg for “Shark” featured the slogan “Hard-boiled drama.”

Reactions to the marketing campaign were mixed. CBS designed the campaign as a tongue-in-cheek advertising strategy to make people laugh. A lot of people did laugh. Since the eggs were printed at a crucial time of the television season – fall – more than a few breakfaster-eaters turned on CBS later that night.

Some consumers, however, were turned off by the campaign and disliked the intrusiveness of the ads. Who wants to be exposed to advertising when cooking eggs – especially since we already see ads on our morning television shows and morning newspapers?

CBS’s egg printing campaign was launched with the help of EggFusion. Based in Illinois, EggFusion was founded in 2001 as a way to tell consumers the eggs were fresh: EggFusion technology printed the expiration date directly onto the egg, preventing egg producers from placing old eggs into new cartons.

The slogans were posted on the eggs during the washing and grading process. Instead of using ink, EggFusion used laser etching technology.

Before long, EggFusion realized there was a phenomenal marketing opportunity with egg etching. Just before CBS contacted the company, EggFusion began printing advertising slogans on eggs alongside charitable advertisements for non-profits.

CBS’s egg-vertising strategy ended after just a single run – but people still talk about it today as one of the most unique TV network marketing strategies ever implemented.

In a world crowded with advertising and increasingly wary consumers, being creative is often the best marketing strategy. As mentioned above: even if you fail, people will still talk about it. Any publicity is good publicity.