The Homa Files

TakeAway: Adult cereal is rarely advertised primarily on the basis of taste (e.g. Special K as a dieting aid, Wheaties as “fuel” for athletic performance, etc.).  However, Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut is going “radical” and claiming great taste, on which most children’s brands do focus.   

Trivia point Kellogg’s may need to message around: its sugar content (maybe part of its “great taste”) is on par with Frosted Flakes – yikes!

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Excerpted from WSJ, “Did We Mention That It Tastes Good?” By Andrew Adam Newman, January 26, 2011

With nearly all American households already buying cereal, there are few people to initiate, so cereal marketers often focus on increasing so called “usage occasions,” like incorporating cereal into an every-meal diet plan, as Kellogg does with Special K, or featuring non-breakfast recipes on boxes, like Kellogg’s Corn Flakes-coated chicken, Chex Mix and Rice Krispies treats.  A  Leo Burnett creative director said that the campaign aimed to reinforce that Crunchy Nut “really is a breakfast cereal,” but “baked into our tagline and concept that ‘It’s morning somewhere,’ is that we’d like to extend usage occasions.’”

A publicity stunt to encourage eating Crunchy Nut round-the-clock is being organized, fittingly, around a clock. In Los Angeles on Saturday, the brand hopes to break the Guinness world record for the largest cuckoo clock, with a timepiece that is 66 feet tall and 28 feet wide.

At the top of the hour for 24 consecutive hours, emerging from the innards of the clock will be not a mechanical bird but an actor, Brad Norman, who will perform as characters from countries where it is morning. Videos from the performances will be uploaded to the Crunchy Nut Facebook page and to YouTube.

Additionally, scanning a quick response code printed on the back of Crunchy Nut boxes with smartphones, which can recognize users’ location and local time, prompts a video of an exotic locale where it is morning.

In a survey by Mintel of American adults who eat cereal, respondents rated the importance of cereal attributes, and taste ranked highest, followed by price, wholegrain content, familiarity of flavor, fiber content and sugar content.

Edit by AMW

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This entry was posted on February 9, 2011 at 5:44 am and is filed under Mktg - Positioning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.