Marketing Lessons from the Egg that broke the Internet.

As of Sunday night, an egg, just an egg "broke the Internet." It wasn't from a celebrity account. It's not related to anything in the news. It's just an egg, with 42 million likes and climbing. That is the world record for likes to date, beating out Kylie Jenner's birthday post of 18 million likes.

What's the value of this random, currently unclaimed account? Let's put social popularity in perspective. I'm sure you've heard buzz about this being the year of the Influencer. The afore mentioned Jenner earns $1 Million per sponsored post. But, that might not be the purpose behind this account.

Let's look into the narrative psychology of WHY this egg went viral, and then we will dig into what the motives of the "Egg Gang" account could be.

A refresher, narrative psychology is a term used to describe basically all of social media. It's the psychology of what we do on social media that connects back to the view of ourselves. "Will this post make me look smart/hip/funny/caring, etc." Popularity and social envy are primary drivers in this realm of Instagram. Think it's just kids on it? Think again,

55% of Instagram users are 25-54

Once the site tipped 1 Billion users, the fastest growing demographic is 40+. That's inline with every trend ever on the Internet. GenX and Boomers are slow to adopt, but when they do, they are super users, technophiles and buyers...oh, are they buyers.

Back to the egg. Who knows what started the like frenzy. Sometimes, the Internet just to prove itself, bends in bizarre ways. Once it got a little traction, friends or friends, shares, hashtags and tagging made it almost impossible NOT to see it. And, what's a little tap on the pic when it shows up? It makes you hip. In the know. Random and revered.

Now, why the hell was this account created? The "story" which was only up 24 hours cited that the account's aim was to achieve World Record status on everything from story views to comments. Other possible explanations below. This is all conjecture on my part.

• The only link is to sell these T-shirts (another viral component) Could be just people trying to see if they could interrupt Instagram with a random act and a product of viral coolness.
• It would be brilliant if these were marketers from The American Egg Board or Iowa (largest producer of eggs). But, is it? Remains to be seen.
• The producers of the egg could have had a goal to be influencers and sell sponsored posts to get in front of what is now 6.1 million followers. (See above comment on what Jenner gets per post). If this is the strategy, it will be one and done. If all forthcoming content is sponsored or veers from the beauty of the randomness, they'll lose followers faster than ice melts in Phoenix.

What can we learn as marketers?

• Inlfuencers are bigger than ever and your best match may not even be online yet.
• The Internet still has a peccadillo for the random, take heed.
• An egg. An egg broke the Internet with no advertising. You need to get more creative, take risks.
• Narrative psychology is the only reason anyone (consumer-based) ever does anything on social media. Except stalkers, and we aren't talking to you.
• You. Can't. Predict. Anything. So, take marketing risks, invest in your team to be B2B and B2C influencers.

Hope you enjoyed, I'm off to create an account featuring a hairbrush. JK, probably. ;-)