The Most Egg-cellent Easter Campaigns

It’s almost the hoppiest time of year (excuse the bad pun), and while we will be spending our long weekend enjoying lots of chocolate, Easter is also a significant retail event and an invaluable opportunity to give your marketing strategy an extra boost. This year, Australians are forecasted to spend $8.6 billion on holidays, chocolates, gifts and retail spending over the Easter period.

Even if you aren’t in the chocolate business, there is still a benefit to hopping on the Easter train. Of course there are plenty of Easter campaigns overflowing with candy, chocolate and bunnies, but some marketing teams have gotten extra creative and demonstrated that you don’t have to put all your eggs in one (marketing) basket.

We’ve collected our top five favourite Easter marketing campaigns that show how you can add value to your business through creative campaigns. We carrot wait any longer, so let’s get into it!

The Co-Op: The #GoodEgg Hunt

The Co-Op, one of the world’s largest consumer co-operatives and the UK’s fifth biggest food retailer, launched a campaign in 2016 with a new spin on the traditional Easter egg hunt. Their aim was to encourage people to go out of their way to help others. To do this The Co-Op created a campaign to find the “Good Eggs” in the community. In a candid video featuring an actor and a series of ‘eggsperiments’, they captured everyday people going out of their way to help, and rewarded them with an Easter egg!

This feel-good campaign reinforced The Co-Op’s positioning as a community brand and successfully built brand awareness, with over 58 thousand views on the video. Additionally, they drove traffic to their website as users nominated their own “Good Eggs”. Check out the video for some seriously heartwarming vibes.

IKEA: Flatpack Easter Bunny

IKEA is known for its easy to assemble flat-pack furniture, so it’s no surprise that this special Easter product also requires assembly!

The campaign encourages purchasers to get their hands dirty, play with their food, and put together a limited edition chocolate Easter bunny. This fun item brings out customers' inner-child, creating a fun experience for all involved. Their innovative idea helps to strengthen Ikea’s point-of-difference and brand image.

It’s still available for purchase at some Ikea stores around Australia and is made from fully sustainable chocolate, so you might be able to pick one up if you’re lucky!

Cadbury: It's the Creme Egg Golden Goobilee

This iconic 2021 campaign celebrated Cadbury Creme Egg's 50th birthday and return to the stores. Its hero video celebrates all the different ways people enjoy their creme eggs, no matter if you are a licker, dipper, baker, 'eggspert', or sharer.

The video made waves with its choice to include a same-sex couple sharing a creme egg, resulting in the campaign going viral and promoting diversity and inclusion.

It was supported by a digital campaign, platform-specific content for TikTok, takeovers,  and an exclusive Golden Goobilee Commemorative Plate. Omni-channel campaigns are crucial in today's digital marketing environment. Utilising strategies that can reach a variety of platforms allows for a broader reach and a more successful campaign.

Carlsberg: Chocolate bar

This 2016 experiential marketing campaign by Carslberg posed the question to Shoreditch residents: “What if Carlsberg did chocolate bars?”. Carlsberg answered this question with a cheeky play on words by revealing to the public a bespoke bar featuring everything you would expect to see at a typical bar - except made of chocolate! Carlsberg invited passersby to enter and enjoy a pint of beer served in a chocolate glass.

Dharmesh Rana, Senior Brand Manager at Carlsberg UK, said: “Easter is a big beer-drinking occasion for our consumers and this year, we wanted to do something a bit different. We pride ourselves on turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, and by creating a world-first chocolate bar, we feel that we’ve done just that.”

Experiential marketing allows customers to experience your brand first-hand. A fun campaign like the Carlsberg Chocolate Bar is highly effective as it creates positive brand associations, makes customers happy and is a great way to generate earned media.

Haribo: #HuntTheDoubleYolker

Haribo launched this 2019 Easter campaign by releasing a special edition mix of Starmix lollies. Twenty packs contained a special double yolk egg lolly, and customers who were lucky enough to find one won a fabulous UK family holiday. This campaign draws parallels to Willy Wonka’s  Golden Ticket, allowing customers to reminisce and embrace their inner child.

Furthermore, this campaign was a great incentive in encouraging people to purchase Starmix. Additionally, most winners posted their double yolks on social media, resulting in a viral campaign and generating greater organic reach.

These five campaigns demonstrate that there are many different ways organisations can create value in creative ways. Although each campaign and business were widely different, they all were successful in creating positive fun customer sentiments, masses of user-generated content, organic viral reach, memorable experiential moments and provoking discussion all around the world.

We hope you all have a hoppy Easter and feel inspired to get innovative!

That’s all for now, yolks!