Long story short
As retailers pledged to go 100% cage-free by 2025, egg producers’ futures depended on certification choices. Despite selling nearly 11 of every dozen eggs in America and setting the standards for cage-free standards, United Egg Producers (UEP) lacked visibility. It had never run a marketing campaign.
Our direct mail activation transformed UEP’s 130 disparate farmer members into unified brand advocates equipped to engage retailers directly. The high-impact direct mail piece demonstrated UEP Certified benefits in a bold, striking fashion while providing practical tools to help farmers keep their own lives “unscrambled.”
This tactical approach enabled UEP to leverage its greatest asset — direct farmer-to-retailer relationships — to assert its role as the expert in the egg aisle and win the respect of retailers necessary to keep their farmers in business and their flocks protected.
About the client company
UEP is a cooperative of egg farmers founded in 1968 that represents members in legislative, regulatory and advocacy issues. Its reputation for setting hen welfare and egg industry standards is why 90% of eggs produced in the United States come from UEP Certified farms
Strategy
While UEP had the trust of farmers, it needed to win the trust of retailers.
When it launched its UEP Certified Cage-Free program with budgets a fraction the size of peer certifications and little investment in marketing, UEP could barely hold a whisper to its competitors’ megaphones. Although there was a lot of existing brand equity from its long history in egg production, UEP hadn’t found a way to really own it.
Objectives of the campaign
We helped UEP speak up by giving it a brand voice that amplified its reputation as an industry standard-bearer and positioned UEP as the adult in the egg aisle. The mission was to make UEP Certified Cage-Free famous as the authority on all things egg.
The target audience
We had a twofold audience: egg producers and retail decision-makers. And it wasn’t just any retailer. UEP needed to reach the big three: Walmart, Kroger and Publix.
First, we turned UEP producers into advocates, inspiring them to have conversations with retailers about the UEP Certified Cage-Free program.
Second, we knew that to make retailers take notice, we would need to do more than inform. We’d need to entertain. With more than 50,000 retail employees influencing animal welfare decisions, breaking through to them would be no small feat, even though the bull’s-eye might seem small.
Media, channels or techniques use
We equipped UEP farmer members with a high-impact direct mail piece demonstrating the benefits of UEP Certified in a bold and striking fashion, including brochures, stickers and interactive items like cord organizers to help them keep their own lives “unscrambled”.
With social as a primary channel, we created a man-on-the-street video series with a sharp-witted host who asked passersby questions about eggs. The twist? When they inevitably answered wrong, we cut to UEP experts with correct answers, creating an entertaining space for UEP to get credit for its authority in the industry.
These videos, along with more visually driven ads, ran on social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Print and digital ads ran in trade media. We launched a campaign-centered landing page that housed all the cage-free facts retailers need to act.
Timescales of the campaign
Discovery and planning for the campaign began in spring 2024, followed by creative concepting, with the campaign defined in June. Production ran through end of summer. We strategically timed the internal rollout to coincide with the UEP’s third annual joint conference with the American Egg Board in October.
This allowed us to introduce the campaign and direct mail piece to farmers in person, explain the strategy and generate excitement before packages arrived in mailboxes. Then we launched externally in Q1 2025.
Budgets
The budget breakout of this campaign was as follows: $700K in agency fee, $180K in out-of-pocket costs and $220K in media spend.
Results
Overall, the campaign successfully built cross-channel awareness, delivering 6.2 million impressions, and drove a qualified audience to the UEP site to engage further (15.9K total sessions). The direct mail piece was an integral part of how we introduced the producers to the campaign and armed them with the right information.
- Highly targeted LinkedIn campaign drove strong engagement and put UEP messaging in front of valuable decision-makers and influencers.
- Demand generation YouTube ads sustained brand visibility throughout the campaign, delivering strong video engagement metrics and reinforcing UEP messaging across a broader awareness funnel.
- E-newsletter ads with leading publications exceeded click through rate benchmarks and reached an engaged audience as they consumed timely industry content.
- Paid search drove qualified traffic to the site, with responsive ads capturing high-intent users interested in UEP content.
- Campaign consistently drove strong site engagement with 32% of users reaching the bottom of the page — 3x higher than the 10% benchmark.
- On average, there were 265 site conversions per month, with FAQs and hen welfare as the top conversion drivers.
- Paid search was the lead driver of site conversions — this was expected due to the nature of the channel, with users likely seeing UEP messaging across other paid channels before searching actively.
Client Testimonial
If possible, include a direct quote from someone involved in the project, confirm its success and achievement of objectives, and ideally why it is worthy of winning an award.
“Working with Badger Rutter on The Unscrambled Egg campaign was a fantastic experience. As UEP’s contact for this project, I saw firsthand how creatively they approached the challenge of bringing greater awareness to UEP Certified Cage-Free. The team developed a campaign that not only captured attention in a fresh and unexpected way but also delivered results. Their ability to turn a complex topic into something clear, engaging and memorable is what made this work so impactful. I believe this campaign is absolutely worthy of recognition.” — Dr. Larry Sadler, Senior Vice President, Animal Welfare United Egg Producers
