Situation/Brief:

In the early 2000’s, Sugar-Crisp shifted from a brand that targeted kids (9–12 years) to a brand that targeted young adults (18–24 years). While previous campaigns for Sugar-Crisp had connected with the millennial target by leveraging their nostalgia for the ‘90s Sugar-Crisp commercials they knew as children, increasingly this strategy was not working given that newer generations of youth, which had not grown up with these ads, were failing to connect with them.

This reality bore out in the numbers: sales for the brand had declined by -12% and market share had declined by -10 basis points since April 2017. (Source: Nielsen Data. NAT+NFLD GB +DR +MM - All Sales. Prior to Spout Program April 9, 2017 - April 7, 2018)

Objectives:

Increase $ sales volume by 5%.

Increase market share by 5 basis points.

Increase unit volume by 10%.

We designed a new way for gamers to eat cereal. The Sugar Crisp Spout allows users to keep one hand on the controller without having to deal with digging deep into the box, messy bowls, spillage, and most of all, sticky hands.

Then, we had to let gamers know about our Spout. We knew that our core target is becoming increasingly weary of the rise of influencer marketing, so we decided to go down the route of being “authentically inauthentic” by creating a fake influencer who promoted the Spout in a satirically comedic way.

Our target was youth aged 18-24 years and our research revealed that 70% of Sugar-Crisp-eating Millennials are active gamers – so our challenge was to make Sugar-Crisp an essential part of their gamer lifestyle.

We did research into our target, including combing through online gamer forums. It was on these forums that we uncovered a fascinating behavioral insight about our target: a lot of gamers like to play games while snacking on cereal straight from the box. This behaviour often led to our target getting sticky fingers, which impeded their game play. We wanted to capitalize on this behaviour, solve this unique problem, and appeal to our gamer target.

Our big idea: the Sugar-Crisp Spout, a totally new way to eat Sugar-Crisp designed especially for gamers.

While the Spout was real, the campaign elements promoting it, including content featuring a YouTube video of a “totally not fake gaming influencer” called “@yoGameGuru, was not.

We built an Instagram account for our influencer and even purchased Instagram followers to add to his credibility. His feed was populated with Sugar-Crisp content (including some of our videos and/or stills of his prized collection of Sugar-Crisp paraphernalia) prior to the launch.

We also created a long-form video that we posted on YouTube and our microsite, and also shared with media-outlets, which helped to further amplify our story via earned channels. Media placement on Twitch further drove awareness with our target.

All paid content drove to a microsite where people could sign up to receive a FREE Spout.

We had approximately 3,000 Spouts to give away that we decided to give away in batches to lengthen the duration of the campaign.

Exceeded all business objectives.

Moreover, Spout redemption was extremely successful. The first batch of Spouts was fully redeemed in approximately 60 hours from release – and each release following that was fully redeemed in even less time.

We had over 6,000 people on our waiting list for our third batch of 250 Spouts.

We received 17,028 unique visitors to our website, and an average engagement rate (spout redemptions or email sign-ups) of 40%.

Most importantly, we took the time to understand our target, uncover a true insight, and solve a real problem in a fun way, instead of relying on the usual well-trodden over-generalized tropes to target millennials.