An Interview
The Executive Director of Egg-Truth.com is interviewed by a Toronto, Canada talk show, “Calling All Vegans”.
The Executive Director of Egg-Truth.com is interviewed by a Toronto, Canada talk show, “Calling All Vegans”. Here’s what he had to say about eggs, how Egg-Truth came to be, and discusses the recent advertising campaign that took place over the course of April and May, 2019.
The Advertising Campaign
It has been a while since we’ve posted to our blog. We’ve been really, really busy with a major advertising campaign and community outreach program that has been in the planning phase for many, many weeks.
A mock-up of the exterior ad face of a Toronto transit shelter.
What We’ve Been Up To!
It has been a while since we’ve posted to our blog. We’ve been really busy with a major advertising campaign and community outreach program that has been in the planning phase for many weeks.
And as of Easter Monday, that campaign has launched! We’re very, very excited and proud of what we’ve accomplished and we wanted to share with our readers all the details.
Creative for interior ad faces.
Outdoor Advertising
We have placed 42 transit shelter posters in key locations throughout the city of Toronto - North America’s fourth largest urban centre. There are two versions of the creative. The first one (seen in the mock-up above) is for exterior faces where sight-lines are long and read times are short. The other creative is for interior faces only and contains a multitude of descriptions about the many illnesses and conditions hens forced to lay eggs endure. The central image is of a “spent” hen whom we’ve called “Lucy”. Lucy is representative of the millions of hens condemned to lay eggs in barns all over the world. Our campaign is using the hashtag #thisislucy.
This campaign will run for 4 weeks with a 2 week bonus. We already have some local followers who have spotted our posters and have begun sending us their selfies alongside them.
We hope in the coming weeks, the millions of commuters who will see these posters will appreciate the realities of egg production and will visit our website, begin to look for alternatives and make compassionate food choices going forward.
“Egg-Free Get Started!”
On Saturday, April 27th, 17,500 copies of our egg-free starter kit will be distributed through The Toronto Star - Canada’s largest circulation newspaper! This full-colour, 8-page, digest sized booklet will feature delicious egg-free recipes and baking tips, a chance to meet Lady Heisenberg of Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary along with an invitation to visit the farm. Our booklet will also include information on the truth about modern day egg production.
A sample of our 8-page, full-colour booklet.
On the back cover, and with the courtesy of the good folks at Follow Your Heart, there is a $1 OFF coupon for any Follow Your Heart or Earth Island product including VeganEgg! These delicious, cruelty-free products are now available in most major grocery store chains and specialty grocery stores in Toronto.
Social Media
Starting Tuesday, April 23rd, a major social media ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram will invite users to visit a dedicated page on our website where Lucy asks them to “Leave Eggs OFF their plate . . . for HER!”. There will be additional animal welfare information related to egg production, links to other information on our website and a PDF, downloadable version of the 8-page booklet which we have also made available for our readers here. Note: only the colour, printed version inserted into the Toronto Star has the $1 OFF coupon - if you are in the Toronto area, be sure to try and pick up a copy of the Saturday edition of The Star.
Image courtesy of Vegan Outreach.
Street Campaigns
With the assistance of the volunteers at Cube of Truth, we will be conducting an ‘Egg-Cube-of-Truth’ at two major intersections in downtown and midtown Toronto: Yonge-Dundas Square and Yonge & Eglinton on Friday, May 3rd. Here passer’s-by will be able to view video of standard industry practices at hatcheries, layer facilities and slaughter houses. They will also be offered a copy of our 8-page booklet.
In early May, Vegan Outreach will be leafleting our booklet in several key locations in Toronto as well. We anticipate they will be able to distribute approximately 1500 booklets!
In addition to helping to educate consumers about the true nature of egg production and create awareness around egg-free alternatives, we hope to demonstrate the impact our campaign will have. If we can establish proof-of-concept, we hope to be able replicate this same campaign in other cities across North America with the support of donors.
If you would like more information on our campaign, please feel free to reach us via our Contact Us page. We are always receptive to those seeking to help coordinate other efforts in other locations across Canada and the U.S.
Best regards,
Nigel Osborne
Executive Dir., Egg-Truth
Confessions of an Ad Agency Insider
It was about 25 years ago. Right around the time that eggs were declared "poison in a shell" . . .
It was about 25 years ago. Right around the time that eggs were declared "poison in a shell", that, almost overnight, cholesterol became the scapegoat for seemingly everything from heart disease to dandruff.
This was a huge problem for the Canadian Egg Marketing Board and they were my client so this became a huge problem for me. I worked for an advertising agency at the time that counted several marketing boards (milk, chicken and egg) among their clients.
When the news hit that eggs were going to be the death of us all, we sprung into action. One of the first things we did was fund a study at a local university. This study, not surprisingly, concluded that eggs, eaten in moderation (which translated to one a day) posed no health risk and was even beneficial.
“So, what propaganda does the egg industry rely on to promote their commercial interests? . . . the red herring is a misplaced focus on elevated fasting levels of LDL cholesterol as the main or only harmful effect of dietary cholesterol”. The real concern is how, and when, blood cholesterol levels are measured as an indicator of health concerns.”
Armed with these "facts", we proceeded to discredit every other study published on the subject. We had an "expert" scientist on the payroll and we made a lot of noise. The truth about eggs and health were never questioned....it didn't matter. Sales were going to be affected and that had to be stopped. This fear of falling revenues was responsible for a lot of very questionable, hanging-by-a-thread-of-truth marketing. And I was responsible for a lot of it. It wasn't just eggs, the dairy industry was notorious for disseminating half-truths cloaked in clever marketing messages, too.
The AEB (Amercian Egg Board) claims about egg safety found to be patently false, misleading, and deceptive by the U.S. Court of Appeals.
I remember sitting around a boardroom table trying to figure out a way to increase sales of fluid milk in a declining market threatened almost daily by the emergence of damaging science and the launch of plant-based milk alternatives. We came up with what we called the "drop" campaign. We knew that trying to get people to drink more milk by the glassful would be a hard sell, but if we could convince people to use a 1/4 cup here and a tablespoon there, they would still have to purchase it in larger volume packaging and we could slow the decline in sales.
The American Board’s primary purpose is to market and promote increased egg consumption to the consumer on behalf of its members - the egg farmers of America.
Canada’s new food guide drops dairy as a food group and introduces plant-based sources to obtain protein. While eggs and some dairy remain in the “protein” category, they are significantly reduced relative to previous decades of food guides.
The idea was to come up with a dozen or so food items, like pancakes, mac'n cheese and scrambled eggs, that were objectively better when made with dairy milk than, say, water! Sounds easy, right? We hired a professional chef and proceeded to taste test the recipes made with dairy milk, and, with what we laughed at at the time, water. Here's the problem. There was almost no difference except for the embarrassing "never to leave this room" realization that more than a few dishes made with water were preferred in blind taste tests to the same dish made with dairy milk! Not really sticklers for truth in advertising, we proceeded with the campaign and, no doubt, convinced a whole lot of people that these dishes are infinitely better, both from a taste point-of-view, and nutritionally, when made with milk - even if it was only 1 tablespoon of milk! It may seem like a small thing...making pancakes with milk instead of water, but it was part of a larger problem of ignoring the facts to safeguard the profits. And animal welfare was never an issue. Not discussed even once. This willingness to ignore what doesn't serve the bottom line is finally starting to crumble. Canada's new Food Guide is hard proof of this. And no doubt the marketing boards I once willingly mislead the public for are now very, very scared. I couldn't be happier.
This blog post was submitted by “Janet”, whose name and identity has been concealed upon request. “Janet” was an Account Manager and Copywriter at an ad agency in Toronto hired by the Canadian Egg Farmers.