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- 1. General Mills: Hello, Cereal Lovers. By Stehen McConahy Social Media Professor Strahler Slippery Rock University October 15, 2015
- 2. Introduction Cold Cereal is my favorite breakfast food and the most popular breakfast food in America. General Mills has a 40% share of the $10 billion cold cereal business in the United States (Lukovitz). General Mills, a company best known for its cereal, was noticing plateauing sales in its cereal department. They decided to reinvigorate Americas taste buds by launching the Hello, Cereal Lovers campaign. General Mills is specifically trying to increase their sales in the cold cereal department by utilizing social media (Cassinelli). They devoted their campaign to brand advocacy and reestablish brand awareness by using social media. They looked to target consumers as a whole and specifically targeted adult consumers. They worked to use new media outlets as well as traditional marketing methods to generate buzz about General Mills. They focused heavily on engaging consumers, revitalizing their brand, and establishing a strong social media presence. Analysis Americans still love cereal, but the reality is that there are a lot more breakfast choices out there now(Lukovitz). Hello, Cereal Lovers decided to take a brand agnostic approach for this campaign. General Mills worked through their web page and through social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest to show people how important and fun General Mills is as a company (Newman). Some of the tactics used included sharing recipes, requests, ideas, and news. For instance on their Facebook page, one woman suggested that General Mills bring back the original Trix cereal (The cereal that actually had the cereal pieces represent what the fruit would actually look like). One of the other major contributions this campaign provided
- 3. was the reemergence of French Toast Crunch in January of 2015 (Morioka). We have been overwhelmed by the consumer conversations, requests and passion for the cereal to come back said Waylon Good the marketing manager for big G (Morioka). Another important aspect was that they were working to increase their reach to kids and adults over the age of 55. One of the ways that General Mills was trying to promote this campaign was using some timing techniques. They used this to their advantage by launching their campaign during National Cereal Lovers Week October 14th through October 20th. One of the unique tactics they incorporated for the campaign was to get consumer submissions of recipes. On Pinterest they created different boards to highlight the many uses of cereal. This idea started to take flight when they created the Battle Outside the Bowl Sweepstakes. Consumers would enter their favorite cereal recipes for a chance to win $1,000 and a case of their favorite cereal of choice. They also teamed up with celebrity chef, Justin Warner to have him create numerous cereal inspired dishes to show the fun, variety and versatility of General Mills cereals. Justin Warner posted some of these recipes to his twitter page and General Mills also created videos of Justin cooking that they eventually posted on YouTube. Some of these dishes included Cocoa Puffs Carbonara, Scallops Crudo with Vanilla Chex, and Fizzy Trix. Some of the other chefs brought in to create some recipes included Amanda Freitag, Dale Talde, Harold Dieterle, Elizabeth Falkner, and Nate Appleman. One of the hashtags created was #LuckyToBe. This was originally used as a message for Pride Week but also began to become important and become a part of this
- 4. campaign (Wong). It incorporated a different demographic and also created a buzz that was used by not just those at Pride Week but was then captured and used on social media. Increasing foot traffic surrounding the brand was also a key component of this campaign. Using Tumblr and Facebook they highlighted the important nutritional benefits of their cereal by stressing the amount of whole grains and vitamins they use in their cereal. They provided a link to cerealbenefits.com, which was an entire webpage dedicated to specifically showing how General Mills cereals are nutritious. In Pinterest, they created a board about nutrition while on Tumblr they created a page to promote the issue. Some of the other fun craft projects used to increase foot traffic was to give fun and easy craft projects that were posted on the hellocereallovers.com webpage. These were easy crafts that used boxes of General Mills cereals as part of every craft. These craft projects included creating snacklaces, creating guitars with rubber bands, toy garages, post cards, jetpacks, and magazine holders. Conclusion This campaign brought to fruition the many possibilities that social media has the ability to create. Social media generates buzz and it is a part of our lives. I loved the bubbly and vibrant approach they took to connecting with consumers. They were personable and tried to relate to their consumers by showing that they too find cereal as important as the regular consumer. A suggestion that I believe could have worked well with this campaign would be a box-designing contest. I think it would have been another activity that would have had
- 5. consumers involved for much longer periods of time instead of just pinning something to a board or retweeting a tweet. Currently (As of October 16, 2015), their Facebook page has 609,276 likes. Between July 2013 and October 2013, the Facebook page gained 127,500 likes (Lukovitz). On Twitter they have 19,700 followers and still have people creating videos and using the #LuckyToBe. I find one of the hardest aspects to measure through social media is staying power. I find this campaign to be one that is still being used by General Mills to keep consumers excited about their cereal. The intriguing part about this, is how do you measure a campaign whose flame hasnt yet burned out? This campaign has captured the power that social media provides because people are still following and staying in touch with what General Mills has to offer. This is the untapped potential of social media that gives marketers the ability to connect with many people very quickly and for long periods of time.
- 6. References ALAN CASSINELLI. (2013, December 31). 13 Best Social Media Campaigns of 2013. Postano.com. http://www.postano.com/blog/13-best-social- media-campaigns-of-2013 KARLENE LUKOVITZ. (2013, October 10). General Mills Launches National Cereal Lovers Week. Mediapost.com. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/211055/general-mills-launches- national-cereal-lovers-week.html LYNNE MORIOKA. (2013, October 14). Cereal Lovers, We Salute You. Blog.GeneralMills.com. http://www.blog.generalmills.com/2013/10/cereal-lovers- we-salute-you/ LYNNE MORIOKA. (2014, December 5). Weve Got Big News About French Toast Crunch. Blog.GeneralMills.com http://www.blog.generalmills.com/2014/12/weve-got-big-news-about-french-toast- crunch/ ADAM NEWMAN, A. (2013, July 24). Online, a Cereal Maker Takes an Inclusive Approach. New York Times. p. B5. CURTIS WONG, M. (2014, June 6). Lucky Charms Marks LGBT Pride Month With #LuckyToBe Campaign. TheHuffingtonPost. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/06/lucky-charms-gay-pride- _n_5460659.html
- 7. Works Cited (Social Media Platforms Used) Campaign Webpage http://hellocereallovers.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/HelloCerealLovers?fref=ts Instagram https://instagram.com/hellocereal/ Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/hellocereal/ Tumblr. https://www.tumblr.com/search/Hello+Cereal+Lover Twitter https://twitter.com/HelloCereal
- 8. Appendices CocoaPuffs CarbonaraCreated By Celebrity Chef Justin Warner. #LuckyTobeMessageand information Golden Grahams Fried Chicken By Amanda Freitag Nutrition Information regardingthenew Trix cereal Snacklaces