International Egg Commission

The Need to Brand Eggs

by Peter High (Chairman – IEC Marketing Committee)

The egg industry internationally has a surprisingly low proprietary brand ratio compared to generic brands. Unfortunately, this is a contributing factor for low egg consumption in a lot of countries. Generic brands or supermarkets’ own brands do not usually grow categories. Categories need strong active proprietary brands to generate growth. As an egg marketer/producer you are not only competing with other members of our industry but also your customers who have ambushed the egg category with virtually no resistance. The supermarkets, by dominating the egg category with generic brands, have ended up with 100% of a shrinking category. As I mentioned before, supermarket generic brands don’t grow categories, so the supermarkets themselves have launched their own proprietary type brands to fill a gap and to stimulate growth, as the majority of the egg industry has been reluctant to do so.

Country organisations and Egg Boards should be encouraging the growth of producer/marketer’s proprietary brands. It’s the activity and stimulation of these active brands that stimulate growth and help grow the egg category thus enabling the countries’ Egg Boards’ dollars to go further and be more effective. The Supermarket proprietary similar brands can sometimes achieve this, BUT due to the fact that you don’t own the brand, price is a very important factor in you securing this business. So in a lot of cases you only have this business because you are the cheapest NOW!

With a proprietary brand, you not only own the brand but you also have greater control over the price and are less vulnerable to supermarkets dictating price structure.

Another major competitor to the egg category are the immigrants to our grocery shelves. These are the snack foods and other food groups that occupy the shopping basket. The commodity section of these categories are relatively small compared to the proprietary brands. Take potato chips for example. In the snack food category they are generally the same size market as eggs but enjoy at least double if not quadruple the amount of shelf space in supermarkets. Why is this you might ask? It’s because of the activity of the proprietary brands in this category. And when you compare the food and nutritional value of snack foods and eggs there is no comparison. The difference is in the marketing within the category.

A great opportunity is currently presenting itself to eggs with the latest trends of getting back to natural and local products. With eggs there is nothing added or taken away. Eggs are naturally full of vitamins and minerals needed for a healthy natural everyday life.

A manufactured product like margarine is a good example. Margarine was one of the first synthetic foods to enter into our diet as a cheap and inferior substitute for butter.

Whenever the opposition to margarine pointed out any lacking nutritional value such as Vitamin A etc, they just added it. Not that long ago they added Vitamin D which made a great on-pack promotion.

But of course margarine being a manufactured product and not a product of nature produced some nasty by products such as unhealthy trans fats which in recent times, have proven to be cancerous and more dangerous than the saturated fats they were designed to replace.

Eggs have now climbed to the top of the healthy list after years of being wrongly persecuted for their supposedly dangerous cholesterol levels.

The growth of Farmer’s Markets worldwide is another indication that people are suspicious of the manufactured and are trending back to the natural. These outlets are a good opportunity to brand local.

In most countries, supermarkets are approximately no more than 50% of the retail egg sales. This leaves an ideal opportunity for proprietary branding.

So when the consumer wants to eat healthy, buy local and prepare a healthy meal in minutes? Well here we are - ‘EGGS’ naturally!

Peter High
High Marketing Ltd
P.O. Box 109 582
Newmarket
Auckland 1149
NEW ZEALAND

E: peter@splat.co.nz
P: +64 21 999 892