A couple of weeks ago there started to be furtive whisperings around the internet, wild rumours that there was some egg was in the process of becoming 'shit hot property'. "But what about me?" You may reasonably have wailed, "Why can't I become shit hot property? Was that artsy photo I took of those sea otters in that Parisian zoo not worthy of online notoriety? It was a great photo and yet only a few college friends and that account for a guy called 'Greg' that I'm pretty sure is a bot liked it. What does this egg possess that I do not?" Well, for one, this egg seemingly possesses a greater sense of proportion.
Speculation about the World Record Egg has been rife ever since it far and away surpassed its target of beating Kylie Jenner's photo of her baby, Stormi Webster, to become the most liked post on Instagram. It currently has over 52 million likes. There have since been several other photos posted to the account each showing the same egg but with increasingly larger cracks along its shell.
Given the amount of attention the egg has amassed, it was reckoned that whoever was behind the post stood to potentially make millions of euro, should they sell the rights to the grand reveal for when the egg finally cracks to a sponsor. Then, on Saturday, a photo was posted to its page showing the egg with American football style stitching down its side. The photo was captioned, "The wait is over. All will be revealed this Sunday following the Super Bowl Watch it first, only on hulu."
While this made it seem as if some partnership had been agreed with Hulu for a marketing campaign involving the streaming network, things panned out slightly differently. During Hulu's streaming of the Sunday's Superbowl, they showed an ad featuring the egg cracking - which has since been posted to the Instagram page. The ad, rather than explicitly being a promotion for any particular brand, is centred around mental health.
We see the anthropomorphised egg, cracking, citing the strain of social media. It then encourages people who feel under similar duress to talk to someone, before a link to a website, talkingegg.info, appears. The website contains a list of countries and mental health charities and services operating within those countries. Though the list is by no means extensive, there is an email address at the bottom of the page where visitors are encouraged to send in information regarding mental health services in their own countries which could be added to the list.
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Given that there had been so much speculation about what could possibly be inside the egg, and so much talk of how uniquely bizarre a marketing opportunity it represented, with the worth of the egg as a piece of intellectual property estimated to be in the millions, it is fascinating, and heartening, to see all the attention garnered by directed toward something so worthwhile.
