Advertising on Eggs, Israel Imports Marketing Technique

Eggs with Laser Imprints. Source: adsoftheworld.com

In Israel, a basic household staple will be turned into an advertising platform, according to Mako News.

Sig, an Israeli company that works on management solutions, has taken a leaf out of America’s book and plans on printing product ads directly onto eggs.

The concept is by no means a new one. In the U.S., as far back as 2006, CBS placed laser imprints advertising their TV shows on 35 million eggs, featuring humorous slogans like “Crack the Case on CBS” and “Hard-Boiled Drama.”

EggFusion, a developer of the “egg-vertising” process from Deerfield, Illinois, saw the venture as a new innovative advertising medium with marketing potential. Whereas print and television ads must constantly vie for the consumer’s attention, eggs naturally catch notice, and are sometimes seen multiple times before use. “It’s unlike any other ad medium in the world, because you are looking at the medium while you are using it,” Bradley Parker, EggFusion’s founder, told the New York Times.

Now, Israelis seeking to capitalize on the venture, have imported an egg etching machine from the U.S. The machine produces ultra-thin etchings that measure only 5 percent of an eggshell’s thickness, and applies the etchings by laser.

Since the first egg ads went out, popular interest for the idea has picked up dramatically, notes the company. “We’ve already received many calls from people who are very excited about the egg adverts” Adi Tal, Sig’s director of public relations, told Mako News. “We started the joint venture with the coops of Ramot Hashavim, and many people who already got the eggs at home were [positively] surprised to find the advertisements.”

The images are printed at a price of about 1.5 Israeli agurot (about a third of a cent) per egg, good numbers for a mass-appeal product like eggs.

Going forward, Sig is courting larger companies, in the hope that egg advertising will enter the mainstream.

“We’ll run with this project from here on, and we’ll offer to big companies the chance to advertise on the eggs, a necessary product in every house in Israel” said Tal.