Scrambled advertising

Was sipping my Cherry-Lime-Xfactor-Diet-Decaffeinated Coke this morning when I came across this article in the NY Times. The story is about eggs, specifically advertising eggs. As you can see in the image to the right, someone figured out a way to etch a message onto eggs. It's permanently on the egg. Kids nowadays, they get inked so early.

Anyways, Adrants covered this back in February, before the egg etchers got an advertiser on board. At the time, I was like: meh. Might be interesting but who's really going to go so far? Probably a poker site. But oh, I was wrong. According to the Times, CBS has just ordered 35 million of these suckers to promote their fall lineup. And if advertising on eggs wasn't cheesy enough, they're throwing puns on them. Ready? "CSI: Crack the case on CBS" Get it? Crack? Ha ha ha! Oh man, those guys are good!

That was sarcasm, please get the sarcasm. Well, at about this time in these posts, we play everyone's favorite game: Is this too much advertising? Today's answer is: Yup. Let's skip the easy step. Try to ignore the icky feeling you get with having advertising on your food (yeah, I know, at least try). Ok? Got it down? Well, with that gone, this is still a bad idea. Surely CBS can find a more effective means to reach their audience. I mean, yeah, they get novelty points but in this case, it's probably more anti-brand than pro-brand points.

If this was at least food related, like Food Network or Sur La Table as advertiser, then it would make more sense. It would be more relevant and people like relevant. Some might even chuckle at it. But for the first major launch to be CBS is dooming this to annoyance and people screaming "more advertising?!". Maybe it'll make the price of eggs drop, cuz you know, the price of eggs lately is killing my budget.