If you’ve shopped for eggs lately, maybe you’ve noticed it’s not as simple as it used to be. 

When I was a kid, eggs were eggs.  They were all white, the cartons were pretty non-descript, and eggs didn’t have ‘features’.  I’m not sure, either, that there were actual brands of eggs.  In fact, I’m sure there weren’t.  Eggs were eggs.

All that’s changed. 

I was at the supermarket tonight picking up a few last minute things for our dinner, and the oblong things were on the list my wife had given me.  She usually tries to keep it short—I think she doesn’t want me to have a bad grocery shopping experience for some reason. 

If you read enough stuff I’ve written, it might gradually occur to you that I’m a creature of habit.  Sometimes to my own detriment.  So naturally I was looking for the same eggs that I always get. 

Anyway, I couldn’t find the regular eggs. 

Which caused me to look at other eggs. 

Which caused me to noticed the cartons.

And so as I looked over my egg options, suddenly I realized something pretty fascinating about the cartons.  Not only are there virtual ‘brands’ of eggs now, but their marketing to the buyer is done in very clever—and subtle—ways.  And it’s all done with words, of course.  

Next time you’re in the market, check out the eggs, and let me know if this isn’t what you find… that there are basically three categories of eggs these days:

1-Old School Eggs—these are flashbacks to the good old days, when we really didn’t know the specifics of what we were eating, and didn’t care, either. 

These cartons say, “ONE DOZEN LARGE EGGS”.  That’s about it.

They don’t even say “WHITE”.

These babies appeal to plain-spoken folk who believe ALL eggs are white, so naturally they don’t have to be told again.  The cartons are plain, and they certainly don’t say, “We Fed These Chickens Hormones”.  That goes without saying, because they didn’t say anything about it.  Make sense?  That’s what Old School is all about; being direct, not saying more than is necessary.  

2-Surburban Eggs—these are the New Age Eggs, which oddly enough means they’re the ones that simulate what might have been fried up on an actual Little House on the Prairie.  Nowadays the modern way is to go back to the old way, or at least feel like we have. 

Sure, I go for it, count me in.  The ones I bought tonight even said, “Produced on Amish and Mennonite Family Farms Throughout The Rural Countryside”. 

Is there countryside that’s NOT rural? 

Come on, it’s salesmanship on cardboard! 

They don’t expect (or want) anyone to think too deeply about this stuff.  They know (or expect) it’s a glance, a quick emotional reaction, and a drop into the cart.  You gotta give ‘em credit, it works. 

But the rest of the carton is what I was really looking for.  It claimed “No Antibiotics, No Hormones, Cage Free” and so on.  Basically, these are eggs that are totally unadulterated.  Real eggs, made like a chicken wants ‘em to be.

3-Fool’s Gold Eggs—these are the ones you gotta watch out for.  I’ve often said that the best deception is perpetrated by telling the truth, and this is a great example of just that.  These Egg-hawkers don’t lie, they just subtly encourage the casual reader to draw conclusions that might be less than accurate—and ones that suit the Eggman just fine.  The Fool’s Gold cartons read similar to the Suburban Eggs cartons just above, but they stop short of making purity claims that aren’t true:

-Cage Free—Implies ‘All Natural’ but doesn’t say it; this only means they weren’t kept in a cage, nothing more.  So you’ve got doped up birds who can go wherever they want (inside the fence).  The implication is ‘No Hormones’, but who knows what they put in these guys?

-All Natural—Okay, so they said it outright—but what’s that mean?  All natural?  So’s rattlesnake poison and cocaine, but you don’t want your chickens full of either one, do you? 

-Vegetarian Fed—Come one, ever hear of a meat-eating chicken?  This is another ‘feature’ that’s meant to have flash-appeal to the shopper, get an emotional response rather than a logical analysis.  Think about it, the vegetarian angle sounds good, but it’s kind of funny, too, isn’t it?  Do vegetarians eat chicken?  Of course not.  But wait, would a vegetarian eat chicken… so long as the chicken didn’t eat meat?  Where does this end?

Could this be the answer:  Rather than ‘All Natural’, maybe make the universal classification for REAL eggs should be “UNADULTERATED”.  Then everyone—even the un-attentive—could be assured they’re getting just what they expect and deserve.  

Call your Congressperson today—maybe the government should pass a few more laws, protect us from The Eggman. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 1:56 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.