In Safeway this week I was engaged in one of my more depressing shopping tasks: Looking for an edible breakfast cereal. It’s difficult. To my taste, most cereals are so bland and overprocessed that I can’t ever finish a whole box. But I always need a day-starter of some kind, so there I was again in the same aisle where I have been burned so many times before, dully surveying the offerings.
Suddenly my eye was drawn to a bizarre apparition: an all-black box adorned with the glowering face of NBA star Kevin Garnett, illuminated with police lineup lighting effects and positioned over the logo of one of America’s oldest breakfast food brands: Wheaties.
A box of Wheaties Fuel was before me, standing out among the vast palette of beige, white and primary-colored boxes in the breakfast aisle like Snoop Dogg on the Martha Stewart show. I stood there transfixed, trying to fathom the concept. This cereal is supposed to be wholesome, American, jock-y and very, very orange. And now: “Wheaties – Breakfast of Gangstas”? Whoa. My hand reached for the box like the root of a plant seeking water.
As I hefted the slimline cardboard packaging I said to myself: I have to have this cereal. Partly to eat it (maybe), and partly because every instinct in me told me that there was some relentless social marketing push for this re-branding, and I was burning to know about it.
Turns out I’m a little late to this party. Wheaties Fuel was introduced way back in the fall of last year as a way to shore up lagging sales of the Wheaties line. General Mills’ previous attempts to expand the Wheaties product portfolio by altering the cereal’s recipe (adding raisins, etc.) pretty much bombed. With Fuel, Wheaties brings their brand marketing back to what works: identification with sports heroes.
With a lineup of top athletes like Garnett, Albert Pujols, Peyton Manning, triathlete Hunter Kemper and gold medal-winning decathlete Bryan Clay on board to sing the praises of this virile re-engineering of the morning meal, it’s hard to see how General Mills could not jazz up the Wheaties name with this campaign.
Social marketing gives them a leg up on the competition in this audience. Endorsement contracts with the aforementioned superstars give them promotional opportunities that are almost nonexistent with other cereals. The current Wheaties website has wisely been redesigned to echo the look and feel of Fuel, with prominent links to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (where you can see what looks to be some very expensive “viral” video courtesy of NYC agency Saatchi & Saatchi).
Print and other traditional marketing presence was vigorous and impressive, with good creative direction in all ad channels.
As of this writing, social marketing success seems muted. But with such a well-integrated media blitz, a social media fail might not matter if the overall push ends up buoying sales figures of its brand parent over the long term.
As for the product itself, it’s engineered to be different from the old recipe in flavor and nutrition. The vitamin content has changed, according to General Mills, “to help fuel athletic performance for active individuals who need a high amount of carbohydrates in their diet to meet their energy needs of activity.” [read: virility enhancing]. To make the formula more macho, they’ve eliminated the folic acid, as this is traditionally more a women’s supplement. This flies in the face of common sense as men, of course, need B9 too. So it goes in the wacky world of product development.
The PR for the product also makes this claim: “The sugar level is 14g in order to provide immediate energy to get the day going and replenish the body’s energy stores after an overnight fast.” Ahem… nice try.
So: what does Wheaties Fuel taste like? Not bad… kind of cinnamon-y with a crunch that can stand up to attack from neanderthal molars and still stay crisp in milk. Unfortunately, like other corporate cereal products it’s about twice as sweet as it needs to be. But I think I’ll finish the box, so that’s something anyway. If they put out a box with Pablo Sandoval on the cover I’ll probably buy it again.