Easter is the second biggest holiday on the calendar, so it’s no wonder brands have started to work harder than the next to capture consumer attention during this time of year. Every year brands go head to head to compete for the best campaign and the last few years have been no exception.
Traditionally, when we think of Easter we assume the best campaign will come from heavyweights, Cadbury's and their Cadbury's Bunny. But, my top award goes to the slightly less assuming The Cooperative Food with their Good Egg campaign from 2016.
The Good Egg didn’t focus on chocolate, but focused on giving something back to the people who mattered and celebrating the ‘good eggs’. The campaign aimed to inspire people to do good deeds with a series of online videos filmed by hidden camera.
The eight online films, called "the eggsperiments", show real-life scenarios where a member of the public has stepped in to help a stranger in need. Anyone that did offer to help, received an Easter egg for their troubles.
In the video below The Co-operative Food dressed a man up in double-arm plaster casts and had him try to eat a sandwich on a public bench.
The campaign encouraged people to celebrate all the ‘Good Eggs’ in their life, from the neighbour who helps walk the dog, to a colleague who makes the best brews, by sharing their deeds on social media using the hashtag #GoodEgg.
So how did the campaign do? Well, The Good Egg didn’t reach the dizzy heights of Cadbury's Easter Bunny or hit the headlines as being this season's best marketing campaign. Sadly, there are no official stats available out there, but what we do know is that this ‘cracking’ campaign received over 1200 mentions on Twitter over the Easter weekend period alone.
Bad press for the good eggs at Co-op
Unfortunately, 2017’s ‘good egg’ is turning out to be a bit of a bad egg after one of their adverts hit the headlines over the weekend and was deemed as being ‘outrageous sexism’ by using the tagline "Be a good egg. Treat your daughter for doing the washing up."
In response to the recent negative press, the supermarket chain has issued a huge apology saying "We are proud of our organisation's equality and diversity, we are sorry."
The spokesman added: "We have a proud tradition of equality and the first female member joined in 1846 at a time when women could not join trade unions and women members of the Co-op have had an equal vote 80 years before they had an equal Parliamentary vote”
So has the Good Egg campaign redeemed itself? That is yet to be decided, but people continue to engage via social media and post their ‘good egg’ deeds and this just reinforces one of the supermarkets main aims - to be a community retailer.
