EZ Cracker – A Marketing Review
The chicken egg — is it so easy to crack as we would like to believe?
They certainly look small and innocent, but ask anybody inexperienced with them and you may hear horror stories about how impossible they are to break cleanly. I mean, these people will probably tell you about how nasty it is picking out pieces of shell or crunching on egg shells in their food, gagging on it and probably throwing up all over the kitchen or dining room.
Absolute horror!
Total madness!
One step away from being admitted to the insane asylum!
So is there an easy way for an average person to break an egg without making a total mess and going ballistic?
Why yes, yes there is! Hooray!
Say hello to the EZ Cracker, a handy device designed specifically to address the problem of cracking eggs.
EZ Cracker TV commercial (NOTE – This is an older commercial from 2009. The current offer does NOT include the Bacon Wave but instead the EZ Scrambler mixing device.)
I don’t know about you, but I LOVE this TV commercial! It’s hilarious watching the people fail miserably at simple tasks.
Here we have an actually useful product, but its legitimacy is drown by the overblown examples of people failing in the kitchen.
Is the EZ Cracker a useful product?
Yes. Without a doubt, yes.
The problem here is that the commercial completely misses the correct target audience.
Unless you just like collecting gadgets, I seriously doubt that the average person has a use for this egg breaking product. It’s not that hard to crack an egg without creating a mess. Be gentle but determined, and with a little bit of practice, an average person can successfully crack an egg. You may not be able to do it one-handed, behind your back while blindfolded and juggling scissors with your other hand like a pro, but you’ll be fine whenever you need to break open eggs at home.
In the commercial we see several examples of seemingly average people who cannot manage to cleanly break an egg to save their life. They screw up and make a huge mess. Some of the shell even makes its way into the final product, causing a woman to make a face when she realizes more of her failure in the kitchen.
But with the EZ Cracker, that problem is eliminated! Anybody can now crack eggs like a pro, using the device to remove the shell from hard boiled eggs or even using an attachment to catch and separate the egg yolk if desired.
The main problem here is that we don’t see the people who would probably benefit from this product the most.
And just who would probably benefit the most?
Here are a few examples:
- children learning to cook
- the elderly
- disabled people
- people who only have one hand
- people with mild dexterity / muscle / nerve problems
The problem is that there really isn’t a nice way to say that this product would be best for people in those conditions. Instead, the marketing department took the easy route and did the most-people-cannot-crack-an-egg-because-it’s-too-hard-or-they’re-inexperienced-with-simple-kitchen-tasks routine.
You have a legitimately useful product here that would benefit a small niche of the general public, but instead we have a hilarious commercial showing how apparently women of all people apparently don’t know how to crack open an egg.
Come on, now!
Traditionally, the middle aged women shown in the TV commercial are right at home in the kitchen. Men usually do the cooking outside on the grill while women usually cook inside on the stove and in the oven. To show what should be experts failing at cracking eggs is just plain stupid. It would have made more sense to see inexperienced men, elderly people or children fail when trying to crack open an egg.
Then again, how big of a problem is this to most people?
Is the company trying to solve a problem that really doesn’t exist or appear as exaggerated in the commercial?
Perhaps.
The yolk separator is a useful attachment for those who do not desire the yellow center of the egg. I’ve never tried separating yolk before, but seeing how people have been able to do it in the kitchen for a very long time, I don’t imagine it being a major ordeal. But if you need to do it and have trouble cracking open eggs, then this product can easily serve a dual purpose for you and can be a legitimate help in the kitchen.
So what about scrambling eggs and mixing the yolk and egg white?
Is there an easy way to mix that without having to get out a bowl and use a fork or whisk to mix the egg?
Why yes, yes there is! Hooray!
Right now when purchasing the EZ Cracker, the company is currently throwing in the EZ Scrambler as a FREE bonus! For one of the few times in recent TV marketing history, I did not see anything in the commercial that mentioned or even hinted about paying extra S&H for the “free” bonus. That, my friends, is remarkable.
I believe that calling the EZ Scrambler “ingenious” is a bit far-fetched, but as a completely free bonus offer, there’s really no reason to spend time discussing or criticizing the item. It’s not hard to give it to somebody or throw it in the trash can without feeling like you’re wasting money.
The company’s landing page website is just as simple as every other product being sold on TV and offers no real information. There are three links to “order now” before scrolling halfway down the page to the order form. These are simple websites using a generic template for simple products.
It appears that the final price of the EZ Cracker w/ egg yolk separator & EZ Scrambler is either $26.95 when doing the two payments for $10, or $26.90 when paying the $19.95 at one time, a whopping savings of five cents. I’m still shocked that I don’t see any indicators that you have to pay extra shipping & handling for the bonus item.
The bottom line here is that the EZ Cracker can serve a useful purpose to a small niche of people. The main problem here is that the company is marketing the product and acting like every other house has people who cannot crack open eggs, which as we know just isn’t true. Doing so causes them to lose credibility and ultimately sales.
What’s interesting is that this isn’t a new product. Gadgets to help people break open eggs have been around for ages, but the EZ Cracker was being sold about a year ago.
I remember seeing commercials for this a while ago, and the YouTube video earlier in the post is from October of 2009. Same name, same product. Just today I saw the first commercial for it again, and as we see, the product is still the same price but now the bonus item has changed.
That just goes to show that even with ridiculous commercials, some products will still be moderately successful.
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For more information about the EZ Cracker, please visit the company’s website.
RellimZone.com is not affiliated with EZ Cracker.