Egg-cellent Easter Campaigns Every Bunny Still Talks About

Easter can be an overlooked holiday for a lot of brands. Chocolate companies seem to always dominate the market, which makes sense as 10% of yearly chocolate consumption in the UK happens around Easter.

But it’s not all about sweets and chocolate– other companies have shown that Easter can be an egg-cellent (sorry, not sorry) time to raise brand awareness and foot traffic.

The digital PR’s here at Reboot have compiled this list of cracking campaigns from a range of companies, from chocolate icons to purveyors of sex aids, to demonstrate just what a power (hen) house Easter can be when it comes to gaining fresh eyes and clucks. I mean, fresh eyes and clicks.

2015 Durex Easter X

Starting us off with a bang (ahem) is Durex. Though 2015 seems like a distant memory now, it was the year Durex decided they wanted a slice of the Simnel cake and launched their Easter X campaign.

“An adult-sized chocolate easter egg with a very adult toy inside”, the campaign caused quite a stir on social media. The egg was only available through the brand’s social channels and they were also sent out to social media influencers to ensure they got the nation buzzing. Following the campaign, Durex was named New Zealand’s most “Socially Engaged” brand, which we don’t believe is a euphemism.

2016 If Carlsberg Did Chocolate Bars

The #IfCarlsbergDid campaign was already iconic in its own right. From cuckoo clocks to kickabouts, Carlsberg doesn’t do them but if they did– they would probably be the best.

In the ancient times of 2016, Carlsberg set its sights on chocolate bars. Not content to improve upon normal slabs of chocolate, they instead crafted a functioning Bar (as in, the place one purchases alcoholic beverages such as Carlsberg) in London, out of chocolate. Everything from the dartboard and TV to the pint glasses themselves were crafted from chocolate and open to visitors on Easter weekend.

2017 Sainsburys Egg Roller

One of the best ways to approach social media marketing, in the hopes that your Ad goes viral, is to find out what social media the young people are using. Years ago, this was Facebook. But, as is always the case, parental figures started joining and the teenagers began abandoning it in droves. In 2017, the peak social platform among teenagers and young adults was Snapchat.

Snapchat had been popular for a few years as a messaging and picture sharing app– with the novel bonus that pictures and messages disappeared after being viewed. In 2017, they teamed up with Sainsbury’s to create a game that could be played on the platform.

The premise was simple: roll an egg through a garden, tilting your phone to steer. As you progress the egg would speed up, and more obstacles would appear as well as boosters. This unique idea quickly became popular, with friends competing against each other. The novelty of playing a game on what was previously only a messaging app soon sent the campaign viral, making it a great success for Sainsbury’s.

2019 Nisa x Cadbury Egg Hunt

With social media marketing, it’s easy to think that all of the engagement and traffic is solely online. In 2019, Nisa teamed up with Cadbury to challenge this. Nisa hid eggs in each of its stores and used its social channels to encourage customers to try to find them. By sharing photos of the egg on social media and tagging Nisa, the customers could be in with a chance to win an iPad!

Nisa also got some social media influencers to join in, and share their participation on social media. This really rallied the troops and encouraged them to head to their local store.

Following the campaign, Nisa saw a 152% increase in reach, a 60% increase in engagement and a 45% increase in customers looking for their local store. Cracking!

2019 Haribo #HuntTheDoubleYolker

2019 was a big year for Easter campaigns, and Haribo didn’t want to miss out on the fun. While chocolate companies focused on, well, chocolate, Haribo stuck to their roots and found a sweet way to do their own egg hunt.

Their iconic Starmix got a new member, in the form of a double-yolked fried egg sweet (as opposed to the regular, single yolked variety).

Twenty double-yolked fried egg sweets were hidden in special promotional packs of Starmix and those that found them would win a premium family holiday from UK Forest Holidays.

2019 Marmite Easter Egg

You may be more used to Marmite being something that is put on toast, perhaps toast that is dipped into a soft boiled egg. Not many people would have previously thought of mixing the savoury, yeast spread with chocolate.

But that is exactly what Marmite did in 2014. We know, you’re thinking “2014? Isn’t this section titled 2019 Marmite Easter Egg”?

Yes, it is. But before the success of the 2019 re-launch of the Marmite easter egg, Unilever had a go at launching it in 2014 along with a Pot Noodle easter egg. The launch of the Marmite Easter Egg was met with fierce debate, egged on by the iconic #LoveItorHateIt Marmite slogan.

When Marmite re-launched the contested egg in 2019, it was met with similar debate along with some nostalgia from the first round. After all, according to Google Trends, the British public had been eagerly googling “Marmite Easter Egg” in the intervening years, one assumes in fervent expectation of its return, and continues to do so despite the lack of appearances. Turns out, we just love a Yeaster Egg.

2019 Ikea Flat Pack Chocolate Bunny

Ikea are the Kings of Flatpack furniture, stocking everything from bedside tables to wardrobes. They’re also known for their ample selection of snack-y impulse buys available by the till. In 2019, fast becoming the year for eggs-emplary Easter campaigns, Ikea launched their hilarious and immediately iconic flat-pack chocolate bunny.

Containing three shaped pieces of chocolate that slot together to form the Ikea version of a chocolate bunny, the sweet treat was an instant hit. People found the play on Ikea’s reputation for creating flatpack homeware relatable and funny, and the fact that the bunny is made from at least 30% cocoa and is UTZ certified is a sweet bonus.

The flat pack bunny was such a success that Ikea has brought it back year on year, and hopefully will continue to do so.

2019 Deliveroo Game of Thrones Dragon Egg

Game of Thrones was an eight-year long phenomenon, capturing the hearts and minds of people from all over the world. The premiere of the final season was hotly anticipated and happened to fall in the Spring of 2019. Deliveroo decided to make the most of this, combining Easter Eggs with Dragon Eggs.

Deliveroo offered customers in London, Manchester and Leeds the chance to grab a real-life (chocolate) Dragon Egg. 20cm tall and clocking in at a hefty 1kg in weight these hand-painted, white chocolate eggs were sold for just 80p to celebrate the eighth season.

Whatever your thoughts on the eighth season (we, personally, will not comment) the Deliveroo Dragon Eggs were a big hit with customers and a big boost for Deliveroo.

2020 Walkers Savoury Easter Egg

As part of the growing trend to cater to those with more of a savoury tooth than sweet, in 2020 Walkers captured the hearts of crisp-lovers across the land with their “savoury Easter Egg”.

While not actually containing any eggs of any description, the offering comes in the familiar Easter Egg box. It contained a sharing pack of Walkers Sensations crisps, a bamboo bowl to serve them in, a bottle of organic wine, two wine glasses and a voucher for a film from Amazon Prime.

Available through Amazon, the £19.99 offering of course came with the option of next day delivery. All the component parts would come to around £35, so customers were thrilled with the saving.

2020 The Money Pig x Reboot Travellers from THIS country will spend the most on flights this Easter

Moving away from chocolate, crisps and any other edible treats, in 2020 The Money Pig teamed up with Reboot to look at the other most important thing at Easter time. Holidays!

The Money Pig wanted to find out which countries, on average, would spend the most on flights per person for their Easter holidays. Along with Reboot, they looked at 14 nationalities from around the world and the top five places people from those countries go for Easter.

The campaign landed seven placements, from companies like Travel Daily News and Travolution. The piece on Travel Daily News garnered 2300 views on the website alone.

2021 Cadbury’s How do you not eat yours?

Cadbury's slogan for years now, when it comes to their Creme Eggs, has been “how do you eat yours?”. From the alarming act of dipping chips into the gooey centre to cramming the whole thing in your mouth (not recommended, it’s a choking hazard, don’t do it), we all have our own unique means.

In 2021, Cadbury’s decided to shake things up with their “How do you not eat yours?” campaign. Similar to their Golden Goobilee campaign from the previous year, which celebrated the company’s 50th birthday, the campaign consisted of finding a special creme egg to win a prize.

In this case, the “special” egg is one that is half white chocolate as opposed to the usual fully milk chocolate shell. As delicious as this sounds, it’s best to not eat it if you find one as it could be worth a grand! This campaign has been so successful, it has been carried over into 2022.

2021 Cadbury’s Bunny Tryouts

Sticking with Cadbury’s, we have a campaign that has been a huge success across the pond. The campaign was made up of a call for potentials to become Cadbury’s next Easter Bunny. Customers submit photos of their pets of all kinds, not just rabbits, donning bunny ears as hopeful contenders.

The campaign has been a viral sensation, with a menagerie of different animals being submitted. From frogs to dogs to horses, Cadbury has searched high and low. It has been such a successful call to action that the campaign has been repeated in 2022.

2021 Onbuy x Reboot Most popular Easter treats on Instagram

Instagram is a social media sensation, with 95 million pictures and videos shared each day. OnBuy again teamed up with us here at Reboot to figure out which Easter treat is the most “instagrammable”.

To do this, they gathered data on the number of hashtags (#hashtags) a selection of popular Easter treats received and listed them in order of most to least tags. Some of the delicacies included were Osterlamm (literally translated to Easter Lamb) from Germany, which unsurprisingly is a cake shaped like a lamb, and Papitas de Leche (milk truffles) from Venezuela.

The winner of Most Instagrammable Easter Treat, though, was Bolo de Cenoura from Brazil, a delicious carrot cake with a chocolate icing.

The campaign received links in publications such as Janette, based in Luxembourg, and Index Digital based here in the UK.