Today my eye fell on an online petition about bringing back Kellogg’s Corn Pops cereal to UK supermarket shelves. As a Corn Pops aficionado, I started to wonder about the fate of this cereal overseas. I realised that, while this product disappeared over here a few years ago, Kellogg’s successfully re-launched Corn Pops in Mexico a few months ago with a change of image, packaging and tone of voice.
The overall purpose of the re-launch has been to grow the cereal consumption amongst teenagers in Mexico. Its population is the eleventh largest in the world, and almost twice as big as that of the UK. A third of its population is under 16 years old and it is the country with third highest cereal consumption per capita in the world, after Australia and USA. This emphasises the size of the business opportunity.
The new Corn Pops product has also come with pop characters and avatars that are meant to engage closely with teenagers. Although it is too early to say anything about sales improvements, the revitalisation of this product has triggered a lot of buzz around the brand on the other side of the Atlantic. There are several forums and websites with very enthusiastic comments about the brand from both target consumers and marketers.
It seems that a key success factor has been Kellogg’s strategy based on text speak – speaking in the same language that youngsters use when sending text messages through mobile phones and online chat.
Text speak is used across Corn Pops’ communications, virtual community and packaging as can be seen in these pictures.
As I left Latin America before the text messaging boom, I have to admit I don’t fully understand what Corn Pops is saying on its new Mexican packages and online community. However I have to say that this is a very good example of brand revitalisation. I reckon that Kellogg’s with this strategy would not only see its sales figures soar within its target market but it would no longer have to remove this product from retail shelves again.
Should Kellogg’s share its practices from the other side of the Atlantic, then there is hope for the UK online petitioner.
Brand revitalisation has always been at heart of the Value Engineers because we know what it takes to build a successful brand over time. For more than 20 years we have been committed to helping brands – large, small, global and national – to regain their profitability, purpose and momentum, and we have identified the 8 most successful strategies for revitalising brands. If you would like to find out more about our brand revitalising strategies, why don’t you get in touch with us?
