The agency’s task was to grow sales of an entire category by getting Canadians to buy more eggs. Specifically by an increase in egg consumption: convert light egg users to medium egg buyers, so that light buyers account for less than 38% of sales and an increase of YOY sale of eggs by 3%.

To deliver on this, they were faced with a simple, yet profound strategic choice: continue to encourage light users to add eggs to their weekday breakfast repertoire, or evolve their strategy and attack the bigger behaviour change and target a different mealtime?

The obvious answer appeared to be the former, after all eggs are as synonymous with breakfast as sandwiches and lunch (something they’d doubtlessly contributed to through decades of their own marketing). However, ethnographic research quickly poured cold water on that. It revealed a deeply practical issue; the absence of time. On a weekday morning, people have their routines finely honed and carving out even 5 minutes to boil an egg was time people simply didn’t have.
And what’s more, light users saw eating eggs for dinner as plain weird. No-one eats eggs for lunch or dinner, do they?

On the contrary. They knew how heavy buyers viewed eggs: a food for any meal. Their challenge became, how could they get light users to view eggs as a meal for anytime of the day?

They realised that the “False-Consensus Effect Bias” was the key to unlocking the brief; a learning from behavioural science that people overestimate how much others agree with their own beliefs.

It was time to shine a light on the normality of eating eggs outside of breakfast by bringing to life their insight: when it comes to eggs, it turns out that not everyone is thinking what you’re thinking.

By leaning into the weirdness that surrounds the idea of eating eggs outside of breakfast, they were able to create a new norm in eating behaviours that has seen product sales significantly exceed expectations.

The big idea was, quite simply, called ‘not weird’; unashamedly exposed light users to their own antiquated views of eating eggs outside of breakfast.

The creative juxtaposed the eating of eggs for non-breakfast occasions against truly weird things, everyday oddities that everyone knows aren’t normal, such as strange fashion choices. And in contrast, it served to show that eating eggs outside of breakfast is perfectly normal. The work resolved with the line “eggs for (dinner/lunch/snacking) isn’t weird, you’re weird for thinking it’s weird.’

In terms of campaign deployment, the fully integrated campaign included TV, targeted digital and OOH, all designed to point out that eating eggs outside of breakfast isn’t weird. OOH was leveraged in high-traffic areas and a digital display was used leveraging day-parted messages - serving up delicious recipes, pushing people to not only rethink eggs, but providing them with inspiration to boot. All executions featured incredibly tasty egg recipes so they could prove to light users just how versatile eggs are and included a CTA, which drove to the recipe section of EFC’s website.

IPSOS tracking shows that amongst those exposed to the ‘not weird’ campaign, the campaign has driven significant increases in likelihood to consume eggs outside of breakfast. A 37% increase at lunchtime and 32% increase at dinner.

Furthermore, this increase was not at the expense of breakfast, as consumption during that meal increased from 66% to 69% during the campaign window. Nielsen data shows that eggs are the only source of protein that consumers are not eating less of in 2020 (compared to 2019). In fact, eggs are the only source of protein that consumers are eating more of, from 21% in 2019 to 22.5% in 2020.