Remember the photo of the ‘egg’ that broke Kylie Jenner’s record for being the most liked post on Instagram?
No one ever anticipated that a common egg could become so famous overnight... well, unless you remember that time the Internet rallied to get a boy his chicken nuggets.
On 4 January 2019, an image of a brown egg was circulating the Instagram with a caption:“Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this."
Yeah, the Internet’s a weird place. Anyway... Did you know that an Indian-origin man, all of 19, was behind this egg Instagram coup?
Meet Ishan Goel!
Massachusetts-based 19-year-old Ishan Goel was the man behind the success of the photo of a common egg breaking the Internet.
A simple search on google will tell you that this boy has been guru of marketing since the age of 13 when he started raising money for his school's American Heart Association program, "Hoops for Heart" and then launched his own marketing firm at 14.
When he was 15-year-old he pitched his ideas to Mark Cuban, who is an American billionaire investor and CEO and chairman of AXS TV. Today, he manages the numerous projects at Mark Cuban Companies.
Ishan is not an average boy. According to Inc., Goel has also worked on a presidential campaign in 2016 and consulted for Fortune 500 companies.
Decoding Eggs-e-cret !
In an interview with toofab.com Ishan revealed about his secret strategy to transform an egg into an Internet sensation. He identified the potential of the picture with brown egg when it was just under million likes. After that he contacted the real owner of that account through direct message on Instagram and offered him help to take it viral.
To make egg a trend on Internet he shared its picture on Reddit ( a platform where people share latest events) and also in his celebrity and friends network.
He gave two reasons behind the success of world record egg:
The first is that the internet fell in love with the idea of using a crowdsourced approach to be able to have a touchpoint to a celebrity that could potentially influence that celebrity’s actions or, at the very least, garner a response from them. The second is that the internet quickly began to see it as a challenge, which inspired people to invest their time and energy into helping drive the post into a frenzy.Ishan Goel interview with toofab.com
Ishan Goel also had given an answer to the question- Why someone will choose an egg over Kylie Jenner?
He told to toofab.com that ‘People have personified this egg’.
A report by Daily mail says that the picture of this egg was posted by an anonymous account and was originally photographed by Sergey Platonov. The original creator of the @world_record_egg has not been identified till now.
“I would like to give all credit to the chicken who laid this egg. They were the spark. I was the gasoline.”Ishan Goel to the Daily Mail
But one thing, however, is clear. This egg would not have become an Internet sensation without the help of this Indian-origin marketing guru.
Different celebrities too, took interest in viral trend
Miley Cyrus who shut down rumor about her pregnancy by editing brown egg picture with a caption that she is not ‘Egg-xpecting’
Ellen DeGenereas too jumped into the trending post of the egg and she photo-shopped Kylie Jenner’s face on the egg, She said that this combination should generate more than 51 million likes.
Even video game company Nintendo could not hold his ‘egg-citement’ as it posted a photo of a Yoshi egg on Instagram.
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