Honest Eggs Co. launches FitChix fitness trackers designed for chickens via VMLY&R and AIRBAG
Honest Eggs Co. and VMLY&R have launched FitChix, the first-ever fitness trackers designed for chickens. Accompanying the innovation is an integrated campaign designed to show people how free and healthy Honest Eggs Co. chickens really are.
VMLY&R collaborated with Airbag to create ergonomic, chicken- friendly fitness trackers that doesn’t impose on day-to-day life and behaviour. Multiple prototypes were engineered and calibrated to properly capture the activity levels of individual chickens – including step counts, which are printed onto the eggs that Australians buy at the supermarket.
Says Roger Boyd, general manager, Honest Eggs Co.: “Honest Eggs Co. is on a mission to change egg farming for the better. We launched FitChix to help monitor the health of our chooks and to continue to bring attention to why regenerative farming is better for the hens, the egg, the land, the farmer and the community. In an extremely confusing category, Honest Eggs Co. is an easy choice as it is the one you can count on to be honest and transparent about the way we farm.”
As well as the fitness trackers and step count on each egg laid, FitChix will appear in OLV, OOH, Social and in-store to educate consumers on the importance of sustainable, regenerative farming practices.
Says Jake Barrow, group executive creative director of VMLY&R: “The egg category is a minefield of naming conventions, all designed to sound like the chickens are getting a pretty good deal. The reality is often otherwise. Right through from product, to campaign, to transaction point, FitChix is an innovation that delivers irrefutable proof that the chickens at Honest Eggs farms live a free and healthy life. So, make sure your next carbonara is an Honest one!”
Says Charmaine Griffith, growth director, VMLY&R: “As shoppers become increasingly conscious of their environmental impact, Honest Eggs Co. is helping to bring the promise of regenerative farming front and centre on supermarket shelves. As one of Australia’s foremost pioneers in this field, we’re proud to share their story.”
Honest Eggs Co.
Co-Founders Honest Eggs Co: Paul Righetti / Ian Garsed
General Manager: Roger Boyd
Manager Events & Sales Execution: Jeanette Wong
Creative Agency: VMLY&R
Chief Creative Officer: Paul Nagy
Group Executive Creative Director: Jake Barrow
Creative Director: Kieran Moroney
Copywriter: Isabel Evans
Art Director: Amanda Chen
Lead Producer: Mel Herbert
Producer: Fiona Norman
Junior Producer: Maddison Fricker
Lead Editor: Alek Janev
Director & Editor: Sara Glaoua
Head of Design: Lewis Brown
Designer: Brock Willis
Managing Director: Sarah Bailey
Group Business Director: Rhys Thomas
Account Executive: Russell Philip
Marketing & Business Development Director: Charmaine Griffith
Creative: Loki Choi
Creative: Lauren Regolini
AIRBAG:
Creative Technologist: Steven Nicholson
Technologist: Daniel MacNish
Producer: Nick Venn
Managing Partner: Adrian Bosich
Head of Production: Martin Box
3D Modelling: Henry Bullen
3D Printing & Production: Nick Pledge
Concept Artist: Xavier Irvine
PR: BCW
Consumer Practise Director: Jessie Gogan
Account Director: Georgina Dawson
Media: GroupM
Head – Digital Investment: Deepak Tahiliani
National Head of Investment: Claire Butterworth
80 Comments
Great! An egg company that is doing right by the chickens!
Quick question though, what do they do with all male chicks? They must be living the life, you know, not having to lay eggs, probably just running around enjoying their lives–ahhh to be a male chick in the egg industry.
I get it. However, eliminating one evil doesn’t mean we must eliminate all evil to be worthwhile, surely?
Regenerative farms like this send their male chickens to the Zoo to feed reptiles, common to be fed to other animals
Couple of questions:
How many step counters did you make?
Does the number on the egg correspond to the exact chicken’s step count? …Like really?
And how on earth did you attach it to the chicken?
Ha! Freaking love this.
i reckon it’s attached by a collar, and you only need to track a few hero hens to get an average or something.
i really dig this idea.
I can walk around my cage in a dimly lit shed and still get my steps up.
Award season must be approaching.
Genuine question, why?
Love it.
Did you just… attempt to make a press release about a fitbit for chickens about gender politics?
Good grief…
Great PR idea but execution of the collateral is not eggsciting at all.
Attaching a ‘fitbit to a hen totally goes against what I thought Honest Eggs was all about. Exploiting their hens all for a press release and a chance at an award.
Sounds like you should get a job at Honest Eggs Co. Only 30 hens per hectare!
It was done to one chicken and one egg. Nearly all purpose-driven work entered at Cannes is. It’s a game that we all play, then return to the jobs that clients actually pay for.
So, why all the fuss?
you can just put a stamp on the box that says ‘Free range eggs’.
Fun ideas like this were once easy award fodder. The. It all changed and Cannes stripped a third of your voting points away if you could show results. An idea like this will have a couple of PR hits, maybe. Unfortunately never going to have any sort of measurable impact so then it’s all for nothing. But good luck
lol you were very wrong. We got awards yo
@bok bok #1
Claiming to be a company with “free and healthy” chickens when half of them get blended alive into a fine paste is a bit misleading. Not saying honest eggs are the only ones to blame–it’s an industry-wide thing.
@bok bok #2
lol, no you spanner it’s about animals, go touch some grass
You didn’t really address the point. Given the industry wide issues you identify, there may well still be better and worse players, right?
this is excellent
Yeah, that’ll really help you stand out
Well, for a start – they’re not free range…
How does a tiny independent chicken farm business have the marketing budget to hire a large ad agency, production company, PR company and media company?
Not hating, I like the idea, just wondering how it can be possible
Generous to call VMLYRWZYZABC a large ad agency.. they’ve more than likely done it for free.
Did you just prove you know absolutely nothing about the realities of the egg industry?
and fun. But product perfectly at the centre. Yes it’s for awards but I reckon that farmer would be pretty chuffed that a creative idea is out there on the shelves. Well done.
So… you expect people to believe that you attached these tiny chicken backpacks to thousands of chickens… and accrued all that data to then print it on individual eggs?
Taking it beyond tiny chicken backpacks takes proper courage.
Just don’t. Don’t do this shit. Don’t present this to an easily lead client like you’re doing them and the chickens a favour. And please, please, please… don’t award this crap.
But we did. We did do it. And they awarded it.
Ahahahahahahha
The exact same idea was done by Sunny Queen and BCM about 6 years ago – good try though
Desperate times at VMLYR. This stinks of scam. And what’s worse it stinks of scam trying to do good which is the worst kind of scam. I can only speak for myself when I say a jury will see right through this and leave it on the shortlist.
You said best: “You can only speak for yourself”.
Love it.
Plenty trophies awarded over the last 5 years where the result have flakey at best!
Love it. Don’t even care if each egg is specifically from a given chicken or if it’s averaged/algorithmed. Doesn’t need to be literal for the idea and messaging to work.
Love
This is fun work and a proper idea and does a proper job of shilling product. Who gives a flying cluck if it’s an awards scam.
I think this whole idea, which on paper is great, boils down to one simple thing – can you solve the tech in a way that doesn’t bother the animals? Given the grim historical treatment of chickens, and given the positioning around happy hens, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt here – even the vaguest suggestion that the tech would be burdensome, heavy, inhibitive in even the slightest way to these chickens means that this campaign lands the opposite effect than the one intended. Had you had found a way to measure the steps in a wirelesss way, or with weightless tags similar to the tiny ones that are now sewn into the tongues of step-counting sneakers, it might have been great. But that unit is a chicken backpack.
Can someone please answer my Q about how a tiny client like this affords engaging a big ad agency/production company/media/PR??
It’s the biggest innovation in eggs since chickens started laying them.
Laying hens lay daily. Is the number printed on the eggs the number of steps per day between lays? Steps per week? Steps per random timeframe? In their lives?
More work like this please. Not everything has to be so serious and up our own butts. Sometimes, it’s good just to have fun ideas out there that is a showcase of your creative muscle – the same muscle CDs/clients are looking for when they themselves want good creative work done.
tried googling but couldn’t find. You got a link?
Love it.
Love this. Well done guys. A lot of fun.
Nice one Jake, Lockie and Lauren!
As a vegan, while I don’t agree with exploiting animals and taking without consent – I am actually impressed by the practices on their website. 30 chooks/hectare is amazing considering the maximum “standard” is 10K / hectare. However, would love someone to confirm they’re not discarding male chicks?
This egg farmer doesnt have all his chickens, wild guess that he’s got, what, maybe 2-5k hens, running around each and every day with these backpacks on!!
They’ll put one counter on one chicken for one laying period, then they’ll calculate a variable range that could be applicable to all of them, then just print a number from across that range on all the eggs from that laying period.
It’s marketing, not bloody NASA
How many eggs have the steps printed on them?
Lol the tenuous reasons people are finding to try to shit on this are arguably more creative than the idea.
I actually quite like this. Sure they didn’t get thousands of chickens to wear one for days on end (which those of you who worry about the comfort factor should be pleased to hear). But it’s a really newsworthy way of bringing attention to Honest Eggs free to roam chicken practices (I saw it on Today Show before I saw it in industry press – always the sign of a good PR worthy idea). But where it falls over for me is the number of steps the chickens take. In the video, the farmer holds up an egg of some 4000+ steps. As an office worker bound to my desk for most of the day – that would be about 1 or 2 days for me. Surely for a free roaming chicken, they can chalk this up in hours…. oh no!! Does that mean these chickens only get to live/roam a few days – or is that meant to be a daily average… Maybe the latter, but without the qualification, I couldn’t help but wonder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yLgxkXwjrw
Fecken gold – thanx for sharing.
A genuinely cute idea. Which sounds like a back-handed compliment, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a really likeable piece of work that deserves any metal it gets. And before anyone has another giant poes-collapse, ask yourself what message it’s trying to convey, then ask yourself if it’s getting it right. Only thing I’d change is actually mentioning the 30 chooks per hectare, which is a truly stupefying amount of space. Although as someone who has pet chahookens, I can tell you that they hang out within sight of their little henhouse no matter how much space they have.
So if this does actually go live as a campaign, it better be true.
On what earth does this sell eggs?
A laying hens is worth about $6-$8 this “innovation” if it actually worked and was legit would cost minimum $65. How much is this joint selling eggs for?
Nice idea in theory but everything from the client, to the lacking craft of the mock-ups and vagueness of how it works reeks of award bait.
Please tell us how many chick fits you made.
Locki and Lauren. Bravo.
Matter how many they made
It’s an idea to use as the base of an ad campaign
You lot are obsessed with it being some kind of lab conditioned research program!
I foresee a case study film filled with chuckling morning show TV hosts and the occasional, ‘they do more steps than me’.
The Project love this kind of stuff.
One Fitbit on one chicken.
One outdoor poster that looks like a mock-up poster site.
Absolutely nothing on the client’s website (last updated in 2020.)
It was called the choocktracker
What is wrong with you? Of course it matters. The version where they make one is a highschool project and the one where the actually do what they’re saying they’re doing is large-scale product advertising innovation. The latter requires people to do lots of really hard work.
Where have they said they are putting them on every chicken? They aren’t. It’s working within the means of what they have to promote their client’s brand and increase sales. Which is what their job is. Nothing wrong with that at all
How are they printing the step counts on every egg if only one chicken has the fitness tracker? The outcome implies they did this at scale. Alternatively they’re fibbing and just printing ‘averages’ on every egg
Totally agree. The output doesn’t match the input. All good if this is just a PR stunt, but don’t claim you’re printing chicken steps on every egg or even more than one egg. A jury will call it out.
Forget the advertising jury. The ACCC under the TPA might decide if it’s bullshit.
Your use of the word ‘implies’ is key here.
Clearly they are treading a line between what was done (which, imo, you have correctly called out as a calculated average gauged from one chickens steps during one laying period) and what your interpretation of what you think was done.
It’s advertising! You seemed shocked that there’s a bit of smoke and mirrors going on!
I just don’t believe that matching particular eggs to particular chickens and marking with the steps is possible. I’d love to be wrong but I just don’t believe it.
21,647 steps. So that chicken lived for about, what – 2 days?
In all my time, I’ve never seen a more scamtastic idea than this one.
It’s not it’s total life steps! It’s how many steps it took in between laying eggs
All I know is that this will be the first time a chicken wearing a Fitbit has the chance of getting triple figure comments. LETS GOOOOOO PEOPLE!
Creative again sorry.
Scam is when you don’t run ads in any media.
Doesn’t look like this is that at all.
You are all angry cos you wished you had done it!
You miss the point, it is a scam version of an idea that has been done before properly
Love this. eggcellent work Iz/Amanda!
Is it scam if you can buy eggs with steps on them in QLD, ACT, VIC & NSW. Cos that’s where Honest Eggs says they’re stocked.
Unless…. it’s scam at scale. In which case you’ve just identified a new paradigm!