Kalles Egg Timer

Background

Kalles Kaviar is more than a famous fish roe spread. It’s one of the most loved brands in Sweden and the classic blue and yellow tube is considered a national icon. For many Swedes it just wouldn’t be breakfast without a tube of Kalles on the table. But research into how Kalles is actually consumed revealed that 59% eat it only with sliced boiled eggs. So, to increase sales the idea was to get more people to eat eggs.

Idea

The Kalles Egg timer was designed to help Swedes boil the perfect egg, regardless of their cooking skills and no matter how they liked them, soft or hard. It took everything into account, from egg size to the cooking altitude (yes, altitude affects the boiling time).

It even allowed people to enter in the code found on all Swedish eggs to track down which farm the egg came from.

Finally, while your eggs were boiling, the app even created a customised iTunes playlist that lasted just as long as it took for your eggs to be done.

Results

Sales of eggs went up all over Sweden, and there was a lot of buzz about the campaign among Kalles fans in the press, as well as on blogs and Twitter.

The app got to number three on the iTunes list of the most downloaded apps in country, with over 53,000 unique downloads (for iPhone alone). Not too shabby in a country of only 9 million people.

Our Thoughts

What I love about this is that fish paste is one of the least glamorous products I can think of and yet here is an app for the stuff which over 50,000 people have downloaded. There isn’t the name of the planner or strategist in the credits but whoever came up with the idea of backing into the egg market, ten times the size of the fish paste market, was one clever person.

Then the creative idea of an egg-timer, attached to iTunes so you can play music for precisely the time it takes to boil your perfect egg, that’s on the money too.