I was reading the Guardian on Sunday. Yes, the Guardian comes out on a Saturday, not a Sunday. I was being lazy, reading yesterday’s paper over poached eggs on toast before venturing down to my friend’s allotment to plant some carrot, beetroot, bean, leek, shallot, garlic and onion seeds. Wearing Hunter wellies. That’s how middle class I am.

I’m straying. On page 2 of the guardian I saw an ad encouraging me to ‘egg a politician’. It was beautifully placed, just underneath an editorial piece worrying that police language was increasing the possibility of violence ahead of this week’s G20 summit. Closer inspection showed that the ad was actually from Divine Chocolate, and that they were asking us to egg a politician in order to keep Fair Trade from slipping off G20 agenda, what with all of this crunchy recession business dominating the headlines.

Good stuff, thought I. I wonder how this malarkey works then.

The ad was directing me to a website: www.eggapolitician.com. I had a quick look online and found that, rather than finding a site with instructions as to how to penetrate the security surrounding 20 of the world’s heads of state in order to pelt them with eggs, the site had a cute little game whereby I threw a (Divine) chocolate egg into the open mouths of Obama, Sarkozy, Hu, Brown or Singh. After two goes, the site directed me to a page with a pre-populated email to whichever leader I had just pelted (Sarkozy, as it happened. He just looked like he was asking for it), pleading with them to keep Fair Trade on the agenda for the summit. With the quick addition of my particulars, the email winged its way off to said politician.

This is a great example of using multiple channels to tell a coherent brand story. Divine are a brilliant little company.  Part owned by a co-operative of cocoa farmers in Ghana, they were set up in 1998 with support from the Body Shop, Christian Aid and Comic Relief, with the aim of producing a mainstream chocolate bar to compete with other major UK brands and thus help to secure Fairtrade prices for all of their members. I won’t go into it any more here, because the story of the farmers, the co-operative, and the brand is told in depth on the Divine website. But what really jumps out at you is that everything the co-operative has done has been slightly anti-establishment, contrary to received wisdom, not really the way things are done, a little defiant. And in that spirit, ‘Egg A Politician’ steps in, to get across a message (Keep Trade Fair!) that is at the centre of their brand story, and to get it across in a way that chimes true.

Whether the positioning of the ad next to a story on police language and fear of violence worked with them or against is up for debate. With my mind swirling with talk of storming buildings, anarchy, and protest, the reality of Divine’s campaign (virtual choccy eggs, not real ones you idiot!) almost seemed like a let down. Where are those real eggings of yesteryear?