Author: Jonah Engel Bromwich and Sapna Maheshwari / Source: New York Times
When Chris Godfrey learned in early January that the record for “likes” on an Instagram post was held by the celebrity and businesswoman Kylie Jenner, he took it as a challenge. He remembers thinking: “Could something as universal and simple as an egg be great enough to beat that record?”
It could! Just nine days after the thought, that record was cracked. Mr. Godfrey had beaten Ms.
Jenner’s with a simple picture of an egg. The original egg post now has more than 52 million likes — her post is shy of 19 million — and the egg’s account now has more than 10 million followers.Why an egg? Mr. Godfrey explained: “An egg has no gender, race or religion. An egg is an egg, it’s universal.”
Mr. Godfrey, a 29-year-old advertising creative who works at The & Partnership in London, and the two friends he has enlisted to help him with the account have now delivered their second act. It is a commercial produced with and aired on the streaming service Hulu, timed to take advantage of the annual Super Bowl ad extravaganza. In it, the egg shares a story about how going viral has affected its mental health.
“The pressure of social media is getting to me,” the egg discloses in the commercial, after introducing itself. “If you’re struggling, too, talk to someone.”
The ad then directs viewers to the website for the nonprofit Mental Health America. The creators say that mental health is the first of several causes that the egg — which they and their fans call Eugene — will come to stand for.
“People have fallen in love with this egg, and Eugene the egg wants to continue to spread positive messages,” said Alissa Khan-Whelan, 26, one of the friends working with Mr. Godfrey.
After the birth of the egg on Jan. 4, Mr. Godfrey stayed anonymous. But he, Ms. Khan-Whelan and another friend, C.J. Brown, 29, agreed to speak to The New York Times to tell their story and explain their intentions.
“We felt that the time was right to come out,” Ms. Khan-Whelan said. “We can put any speculation to bed.”
There has been a lot of puzzlement about how a picture of an egg created an Instagram frenzy. Some speculated that the account’s creator had paid influencers to spread the word. Others even took credit for growing the egg’s audience.
Mr. Godfrey says that such claims are untrue and that the account’s growth was “completely organic.” No one person helped the egg’s rise in popularity and no single account or group of accounts helped it to explode.
They did note a demographic that embraced the egg immediately.
“I think it was perhaps the younger generation,” Mr. Godfrey said. “In the schools and stuff, it started to spread. It sort of spread through playgrounds.” He noticed that interactions with young people would peak between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, “when school was out.”
Ms. Khan-Whelan recalled seeing “amazing videos of kids in their class going ‘Miss, miss, have you liked the egg?’”
Marketers agreed that the youth had been key to the egg’s success. (Instagram technically…
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