Kellogg is the market leader in Australia, but the Cereal market is in decline. As a result of cutting out this fibre rich food group, the country is in a fibre crisis - 72% of Australian adults and 58% of Aussie kids aren’t meeting their daily fibre needs. This is leading to poor gastrointestinal health, and has the potential to cause AUD$1.5bn dollars of unnecessary health care costs.

Our objectives were to reach 10 million people across Australia and New Zealand, 50 pieces of coverage with key message in 90% of those, 100% growth in engagement in Kellogg’s educational platform “open for breakfast” and ultimately to help stop the 5% decline cereals were experiencing.

Advertising would have a part to play, but to re-establish the cereal buying behavior we had to stand out from the sexier, newer gut health ‘innovations’ and breakfast competitors and land the health benefits of cereal.

Aussie’s didn’t realise their healthy gut bacteria were dying in their millions.

So we decided to help our audience see the little guys inside them as an endangered species with fibre crucial to their health and the Aussies’ they live in health too.

To make Aussies care we had to make our microbes ‘real’, make them ‘grammable’ and turn them into megastars – so we created the world’s first gut bacteria zoo!

Kellogg-scientists and award-winning animatronics builders brought three of the good gut bacteria to life – lactobacillus, streptobacillus and bifidobacteria, we renamed them Strepto, Lacto and Biffo.

They were 400,000x scale and accurate in colouring, texture and movement. We wanted people to be able to feed them their fibre to really land our point and aid interaction, so we added some mouths. And making our bacteria remote controlled meant their personalities came alive – raising both awareness and smiles.

Our key message was that without fibre, your good gut bacteria is at risk of depletion. Kelloggs cereal contains the fibre your gut needs to stay healthy.

A fifth of Australia is Millenial, that’s 4.2 million people. They are more educated, connected and demanding around food than the generations before them. They’re the largest group abandoning cereal and raising the next generation to do the same. They don’t connect fibre with cereal, and definitely don't connect cereal with gut health.

So creating world-first animatronics was one thing, but to hit our objectives we had to build a campaign around them, cleverly seed the Bacteria Zoo.

With a budget of $190k and a desire to reach a third of the Aussie population, we needed to prioritise an earned approach and find a whole new way to get attention, engage media and get our message over to our audience.

The activation went live during the school holidays at Sydney’s WILDLIFE and WOAH! Studios in NZ. Everything around our microbe stars was designed to educate on fibre role in gut bacteria’s health, an interactive good gut quiz, animations on screen, microscopes and of course our Bacteria Handlers. Helping people get hands-on with the animatronics and further explaining how to look after your own bacteria with Kellogg cereal.

At launch media got a private hands-on with our animatronic stars, whilst listening to scientist Dr Sam Hay(Aus) and dietician Hannah Eriksen(NZ) explain the role of fibre in an easily digestible way.

Bloggers captured video content was amplified via Kellogg’s owned channels to reach audiences who couldn’t physically visit the exhibition.

Our microbe-stars and health experts got the key message out and through our influencers recipe content, online gut quiz and owned articles, the benefits of cereal fibre landed with our millennial audience.