SUPERMARKETS SAY NO TO EASTER PUNS
Top grocery retailers unite to drop eggy marketing guff
BRITAIN’S supermarkets have got together and agreed not to use any egg puns in their advertising campaigns this Easter. The season is usually awash with adjectives with the prefix ‘ex-‘ replaced by the word ‘eggs’ in the mistaken belief that this is either amusing or clever.
“It’s about time that this tiresome practice came to an end,” said Herbert Pocket, chair of the Joint Supermarket Retail Association. “I’m sure our customers are sick to the back teeth of reading about ‘Eggseptional prices’ or ‘Egg-strordinary value’ every time they visit one of our stores between February and May.”
“Nobody has ever once laughed or been entertained by these signs. They’re simply beyond dull” he continued. “Honest to God, if I have to look at another sign reading ‘Eggstra Special Easter Offers’ I’ll slit my fucking wrists.”
gravy
But advertisers have said that the supermarkets are throwing away ‘advertising gold’ in banning egg-based puns over the Easter period, and they have advised the retailers to think again. “We are the egg-sperts in this field and we know that these clever word plays really do work,” said Dickey Beasley, senior account manager at London advertising agency Beasley, Bartle, Bogle, Heggerty, Needham, Draper, Pryce, Cooper, Sterling, McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb.
perjury
“These are tried and trusted advertising tropes, and I can’t help thinking that our clients are being eggs-tremely short-sighted in not using them this Easter,” he quipped, doing little quote marks with his fingers and chuckling to himself.
But Beasley accepted that the decision had been made and said that his agency would work to any given brief. “In the ad business, the customer is king, and if they want to show these puns the eggs-it, then that’s up to them,” he said, rocking with mirth.
And he said that said that his agency creatives would be pitching a new Easter campaign to one of their big supermarket clients, featuring a different form of seasonal wordplay.
“Think of Easter, and after eggs, you will think of the Easter Bunny. Our new campaign will feature puns about rabbits, which admittedly are a bit fewer and further between than the egg ones, but I think it’s a winner nevertheless,” he said.
“‘Hop on over this Easter’ and ‘Saving you more Bunny this Easter,’ that sort of thing. I think they’ll go for it.”
“At least I hope they do. We’ve got a back-up campaign with some clever puns about being nailed to a cross, but I think that’s going to be a bit harder to get over the line,” he added.