Scrambled Marketing
Today's New York Times has an article talking about CBS's unusual new advertising media--eggs. They plan on laser-etching slogans and ads for their upcoming fall schedule directly onto the surface of eggshells.
The technology was made possible by a company called EggFusion, who developed the procedure to mark eggs with expiration dates. CBS is so sunny side up on the technology that they've worked out an exclusive period to use the method.
I appreciate the desire of a company to find new and novel ways to catch consumers' eyes, especially in these times of mass mindshare and eye space confusion. It's also creative because it's different.
The problem is that what's creative and topical quickly palls and becomes intrusive. Paris Hilton was interesting once, too. The very nature of a cliche is that of overworked creativity and I suspect that the idea of advertising eggshells will quickly lose its novelty value and become boring, eventually tedious, ultimately annoying.
Where will this end? It should be easy to advertise on almost every imaginable food stuff and notice that I'm not talking about the packaging, but the thing itself. How about logos printed right on apples with edible dyes? Printed bacon. Laser-etched breadcrusts. The list goes on.
I would hate to see legislation stopping this because it would be hard to get it right. Much better would be to see consumer groups pounding advertisers holding them accountable for every stupid stunt and forcing the marketers to keep these commercials fresh, letting them know that we consumers are annoyed before these stunts get boring and possibly boycotting the products as a penalty for over-zealous intrusiveness.
Posted on July 17, 2006
