Dive Brief:
- General Mills will sponsor the upcoming 2018 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, according to a company statement. The assignment for all divisions — elementary school, middle school, high school and college — is to pour a bowl of cereal using a complicated and humorous contraption that team members design and build.
- The contest is named for Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who died in 1970. Breakfast machines have a long Rube Goldberg heritage, the contest organizers say in the statement, and have been featured in the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and the "Back to the Future" movies.
- "Who better than General Mills to be our national task sponsor?" Jennifer George, legacy director of the contest and Goldberg's granddaughter, said in the statement. "After all, I grew up with General Mills at my breakfast table with their iconic cereal characters and beloved brands. I can't wait to see this year's winning Rube Goldberg machines pour some of my favorites — from Cheerios to Lucky Charms to Cinnamon Toast Crunch!"
Dive Insight:
Cereal's popularity has slumped in recent years for a host of reasons. Consumers want more convenient food items for breakfast with less assembly required, they prefer foods with more protein, and many want to avoid artificial flavors and colors.
While cereal may be the most consumed breakfast food in the U.S. with a 90% household penetration, categories such as Greek yogurt, breakfast bars and biscuits have eroded its dominance. Since 2009, cereal sales in the U.S. have dropped from $12.7 billion to $10.4 billion — a 17% decline, according to research firm IBISWorld.
Cereal manufacturers have responded by developing new products, but the limited breakfast window can sometimes constrain growth. Fast-food and fast-casual restaurants are also chipping away at their customer base by offering on-the-go breakfast items and also serving them all day.
Millennials have moved away from breakfast cereal, with studies showing they find preparing it and washing bowls and spoons afterward too time-consuming. To fight back, General Mills introduced new cereal products that stray from the traditional box format and instead come in single-serve pouches, along with snack bars that don't need milk. These alternatives make cereal a more convenient meal or snack food for on-the-go consumers. But according to the company's latest earnings report, cereal sales continue to slide, dropping 7% in the last quarter.
Those who want to save on breakfast preparation and cleanup time aren't likely to return to cereal if a complicated machine prepared it for them. But they may be interested in the creative approaches shown by entrants in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, which draws thousands of participants nationwide. And, should they tune in for the contest finals next spring, they'll see plenty of boxes of iconic General Mills cereal on display and perhaps feel that nostalgic pull of the breakfast bowls of their childhood.
In the contest, the next generation of consumers will be spending hours figuring out how to prepare the perfect bowl of cereal, a habit that they could incorporate into their lives as they grow up. And for some of their millennial parents, watching their children pour lots of cereal may inspire them to have some themselves. The maker of Cheerios, Wheaties and Chex is counting on it.
This isn't the first outside-the-box promotion the Minnesota-based cereal company has sponsored to build buzz. For a weekend in June, General Mills opened a Cinnamon Toast Crunch Drive Thru in Arizona that resembled a giant box of cereal and a carton of milk. The target was families on road trips near the Grand Canyon, and the drive thru offered several recipes featuring the cereal. It was an example of an advertising experience designed to appeal to millennials by immersing themselves in the promotion, according to Ad Age.