Kellogg's Pop-Tarts Convenience Promotion Earns Global Marketing Award

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — The Kellogg Co. won a 2019 Shopper Marketing Effie Award in the Multi-Retailer Program (Silver) category. The Integer Group was the lead agency.

First launched in 1968, the Effie Awards honor the most effective advertising efforts and the companies and individuals who are responsible for them.

After identifying a decline in household penetration, Kellogg's Pop-Tarts brand sough to bring back consumers it thought it had lost: teenagers and young adults, according to Convenience Store News sister publication Path to Purchase IQ. The brand succeeded by remarketing the brand with a promotion tied to something that matters a great deal to shoppers in this age group: video games.

At several mass merchant and convenience retailers, Kellogg's leveraged excitement around the release of the game "Destiny 2" from Activision, offering a national promotion for fans to get free "XP Boost" power-ups to use in the game when buying one box of Pop-Tarts.

It also spruced up specialty packaging and in-store displays to target "Destiny 2" players and rolled out a strong social, PR and earned media campaign to tap into the anticipation gamers felt before the launch of the game. Participating retailers received exclusive offers for incremental space.

Kellogg's research found that "Destiny 2" enjoyed a high level of fandom engagement, such as players seeking leaked trailers online or willing to stand in line overnight to buy. Tapping into this group helped earn the brand repeat purchases of Pop-Tarts and a more than 12 percent bump in sales compared to a year ago during the promotion's period, the company said.

Young males, who Pop-Tart targeted, were the largest demographic group to redeem. The brand learned that teens and young adults had a connection to Pop-Tarts when they were younger but felt they had grown out of the snack. Their passion for gaming brought them back to the brand, and video gaming naturally lends itself to snack behaviors, according to an Experian study on teens the brand looked at.

That study also found that shoppers who are 18 to 34 years old are 147 percent more likely to spend money on video games than music or movies. Per a video game study from Entertainment Software Association, Kellogg's learned that 56 percent of gamers are 35 years old and younger. 

Convenience Store News and Path to Purchase IQ are properties of EnsembleIQ.