How “Easter eggs” can infuse your ads with year-round delight

The term “Easter egg” – a hidden message, feature, or experience within a piece of creative work, designed for hardcore viewers or fans to stumble upon – turns 45 this year. Originally coined in 1980 by an Atari game developer, the phenomenon has gone fully mainstream thanks to the proliferation of Easter eggs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and, even more famously, Taylor Swift’s entire ethos.

Swift uses Easter eggs to tease new music and provide special content to the megafans that take the time to decode her messages, right under the general public’s nose. She once told Entertainment Weekly:

“I think the best messages are cryptic ones. Easter eggs can be left on clothing or jewelry. This is one of my favorite ways to do this because you wear something that foreshadows something else, and people don’t usually find out this one immediately, but they know you’re probably sending a message. They’ll figure it out in time. Lots of examples of this exist through the history of my career.”

Swift’s Easter eggs often require advanced knowledge of her life, music, and history, and are best solved by collaborating with other members of the fan community. This gives her most dedicated fans the opportunity to set themselves apart from casual listeners, incentivizing them to closely examine each piece of Taylor Swift news or content that comes out to find sneak peeks into her future hidden in plain sight.

You don’t have to be Taylor Swift to benefit from making Easter eggs part of your brand, nor does it have to be the season of chocolate bunnies. This strategy works incredibly well for anything that has a rich narrative to comb through, from music catalogues to video games, book series, movies, TV shows, and more. The hunt for Easter eggs can create a strong community bond among those passionate enough to look.

However, deep lore isn’t always required for Easter eggs to work. Google is famous for their quirky Easter eggs (go type ‘askew’ into your Google search bar now), breaking through the monotony of our internet lives with fun little hidden adventures, just waiting for you to discover them. Many sites, including Google, create Easter eggs for their 404 error pages, to minimize user frustration and encourage brand loyalty.

Many companies will also include minor Easter eggs in their materials that hearken back to their brand beginnings. For example, a recent Burger King ad featured a hamburger-shaped bus route titled Route 54, a nod to the year Burger King was founded.

In a world where so many entities are trying to capture your attention, these hidden little moments can disrupt endless scrolling and make your brand more memorable and positive for your audiences. At Infillion, we’ve worked with brands across vastly different verticals — from Financial Services to Travel to Home and Garden — to craft scavenger hunt-esque experiences where the user can discover different benefits and features by combing through the ad experience with a keen eye.

So how can advertisers incorporate hidden Easter eggs into their content? According to Fast Company, there are 4 main rules to keep in mind:

1. Keep it relevant
2. Keep it fun
3. Maintain consistency
4. Encourage sharing

Luckily, as the world of interactive, omnichannel advertising grows, so too do the opportunities to devise clever ways to incorporate Easter eggs into your digital creative.

A few years ago, Cadbury combined the Easter egg phenomenon with literal Easter eggs when it put on a worldwide digital Easter egg hunt. The company used anonymized data to “hide” eggs in digital spaces relevant to frequent Cadbury consumers, both online and in OOH ads. Consumers could first find and then hide digital eggs anywhere in the world for their loved ones to find, alongside accompanying clues to help their loved ones seek them out. After they completed their experience, users were offered the chance to send a real Cadbury egg to their family and friends. The promotion was such a hit that the company now brings back its “Worldwide Hide” annually around Easter.

With the increasingly sophisticated ecosystem of omnichannel advertising plans that reach users wherever they are, whether that be on the go on their phone, out and about at events, or at home watching CTV, the possibilities for clever, interconnected Easter egg campaigns are endless.

When used correctly, Easter eggs can be incredibly effective at growing brand awareness through viral organic growth, with very little work required on the brand’s end. While these hidden messages aren’t a fit for every KPI or every campaign, they’re something for any brand to be aware of and consider as they devise their digital omnichannel advertising strategies going forward.

Want to learn how to engage your loyal followers with outside-the-box interactive ad creative? Reach out to Infillion today.