World record egg
CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS
CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS
CAMPAIGN SUMMARY
On January 4 2019, a mysterious Instagram account named World_record_egg posted an image of an egg, convincing Instagram users to heart the post and beat Kylie Jenner current world record for the most liked picture. On January 15, the photo quickly receives over 42 million likes after 11 days on social media. Chris Godfrey, the origin of the Instagram account, posted the image with the idea of “something as universal and simple as an egg” could win over celebrities. On February 4, the World record egg had a special spot during Super Bowl in a Hulu spot. In the video, Eugene the egg collapses due to the media pressure and suggests people with social media anxiety to seek help.
World record egg is still being used to motivates people. The account is now having over 8.4 million followers on Instagram, Eugene the egg’s post still remains the world record for the most liked picture.
The World record egg was first recognized as a social trend due to no one know the account’s owner, no clear goals to published the image and the topic only taking a period of time but later it develops into a campaign (Tobin 2019). Therefore, the goal has changed at least twice. The first goal was to set a world record in the most liked post on Instagram. The second goal was to support people to have social media anxiety.
At first, Godfrey releases the image on Instagram with the caption: “Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram”, calling and challenging social media user to beat Kylie Jenner, who holds the record at the time. Godfrey simply explains he pick an egg because ‘An egg has no gender, race or religion. An egg is an egg, it’s universal’ (Edmonds 2019). He also claims that the account was not received any sponsor at the time, and no Instagram ad need to viral it (ClickZ 2019). Due to Eugene the egg successes, it developed and became a campaign. As the times by, the account shares images of the egg cracking little by little.
On February, Hulu was the first company able to sign a contract worth $10 million dollars to sponsor for the egg (Spangler 2019). The first video of the egg was previewed on February 4 during Super Bowl ad break. On the video, Eugene the egg was cracking and collapse, convince people with mental health and being under social media pressure should seek for help. At the end of the video, a link was direct to Mental Health America, a non-profit organization from 1909, however, the organization was not responsible or sponsor for the campaign. Godfrey shares that the whole campaign was only his personal experiment and he glad that the campaign has great result so he decided to spread a positive message through it.
CAMPAIGN RESULT
In less than 10 days, the record was beaten easily. The director shares that most of the likes period were into the afternoon. The peaks were fallen in between 3 to 4 pm, which makes he believes that most of them came from young audience, especially after they finished school (Bromwich & Maheshri 2019). On July, the post itself receives over 53 million likes and 3.1 million comments (Figure 1). The hashtags #egggang and #liketheegg have almost 200 thousand posts on Instagram. The account World_record_egg also upload the video on Instagram. The video had over 36 million likes and 106 thousand comments.
Eugene the egg’s image was also be shared by viral website, including LADbible and Buzzfeed as well as be mention on famous show such as The Ellen Show and late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon and tagged by several celebrities (Maguire 2019). Before revealing the egg as a campaign, games imitated the egg was famous. Organizations also hope to capture the attention, some famous brands as Tarte, Ikea, and Tinder shares social post that involve egg in the content (figure 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2
WHY THE WORLD RECORD EGG BECOME VIRAL ?
It wasn’t the first time that social media put much effort to support something on the internet. On May 2017, a man asks for 18 million retweets on Twitter to help him get free nuggets at Wendy’s restaurant (Maguire 2019). Celebrities and social media users share his post, and although the tweet wasn’t reached the goal, it still has almost 1 million likes (figure 4). This was just an example of how eager people are on unnecessary thing. According to Carter (2019), the ‘meme’ phenomena was one of the factors that help the egg's success. The author compares the similarities of human reaction when they see ‘meme’ and the egg image. Carter (2019) claims that people like ‘meme’ posts also like the egg images because they require warm responses, influence, and laughter.
Another reason was that people feel excited with the thought of mocking and beating a celebrity. In Carter article, Matsakis conducts question from people liked the images and concluded that “The egg and other seemingly meaningless internet fads are beloved because they stand in contrast to the manicured, optimized content that often fills our social media feeds, especially from people like the Kardashians. It’s hilarious to give an uncooked omelette the same level of attention normally reserved for celebrities and politicians. But the egg is really just a mechanism of the same social media economy it feels like it’s mocking.”
CONCLUSION
Despite the successful Eugene the egg, there were people still disappointed when the egg reveals itself as a campaign and not remain to be a trend or mystery. However, it would be hard to give any improvement to the campaign because the World record egg only receives sponsor to spread out positive messages. Moreover, the campaign proves that as long as finding the right insight, it is possible to make content viral with only one platform and no need for ad support.