Dive Brief:
- Kellogg announced Thursday that it will launch its first new consumer campaign for Froot Loops in 50 years, according to USA Today. The campaign, featuring the tagline "Whatever Froots Your Loops," targets millennial consumers as well as children, and will appear in TV commercials, banner ads, social media and on branded products like sunglasses.
- Kellogg believes that its colorful cereal, which debuted in 1963, has enough staying power to lure nostalgic young adults back to the product. According to the NPD Group, only baby boomers (23%) eat more cereal than milllennials (17%). They eat cold cereal at times other than breakfast 18% of the time, compared to 15% of consumers overall.
- "You can't beat the convenience of a bowl of cereal. It takes such little time to prepare," Darren Seifer, NPD's food and beverage industry analyst, told USA Today. "Yes, other options out there are just as quick, but we were brought up on cereal and habits are slow to change."
Dive Insight:
Busy schedules and a desire for nutritious, natural and value-added foods have lured young adults away from boxed cereals in exchange for yogurt drinks, smoothies, ready-to-heat breakfast sandwiches and other grab-and-go morning foods. Despite NPD analyst Darren Seifer's claims that the "convenience of a bowl of cereal can't be beat," studies have shown that millennials find preparing their cereal in the morning and then cleaning the bowl too time-consuming at the start of their day.
In an attempt to recapture this sought-after demographic — as well as lift overall category sales, which are expected to fall 5% during the next four years alone — many cereal makers have worked to incorporate their products into more convenient applications, such as granola bars or breakfast squares. Kellogg even transformed its Special K cereal into a quiche.
Product innovation seems like a savvy way forward for the cereal industry, though it seems unlikely that cold cereal will ever reclaim its place as the go-to morning food. Still, that doesn't mean the category can't make inroads in other meal times. Many eat cold cereal as an afternoon snack, meal replacement or late-night dessert.
By launching an ad campaign that plays on the nostalgia millennials have for the sugar cereals of their childhood, Kellogg is trying to shoulder its way back into the cereal game. Many manufacturers are reformulating their products to include trendy ingredients and clean label claims that millennials demand, but the winning factor for many legacy cereal brands is their indulgence. If cereal makers begin marketing beloved sugar cereals as novelty, nostalgic desserts, manufacturers may be able to refresh sales without reformulating.
It will be interesting to see how young adults respond to the "Whatever Froots Your Loops" campaign. If successful, it's likely that other cereal brands will adopt a similar strategy, as leveraging the nostalgia of classic products could capture older generations as well.