Breakfast, the most important meal of the day, and a very lucrative market. People need to eat breakfast. Okay, so we don’t need to but it’s a lot easier to sell people stuff if they think they need it. Based on that assumption, who in this wide earth are easiest to convince? Children of course, and the part of breakfast kids eat most often is cereal. There are already hundreds of cereals on the market and this creates a sticky situation: what do kids want in a breakfast cereal? I did a little thought experiment to find out.
First off is sugar, a children’s cereal in most cases must have at least as much sugar as is contained in a truckload of pixie sticks. Why? Kids like to be hyper; sugar helps them get there. Being hyper annoys most adults, all the more reason to eat sugar. The problem with current cereals it that they have measurable amounts of stuff other than sugar in them. Kids want sugar, therefore the more sugar in a cereal the more kids will eat it. By this logic the basis for a good kid’s cereal would be a box of sugar cubes.
Second on the list is color, it needs either bright colors or a good chocolate brown. If it doesn’t turn the milk colors it won’t do as well as it might otherwise. Kids like bright colors, eating food that’s neon colored makes it feel like candy. But eating sugar cubes is just like eating candy, why have the color? Well, high sugar content does not candy make for a child. If you’re eating it for breakfast it must not really be candy, but the more it has in common with candy the better. Our sugar cubes are being packaged as a cereal so they are no longer candy, thus color is needed to lure in the little walking sweet tooths.
Name, every cereal needs a good name. It must be at the same time fun and descriptive, without revealing how much sugar is in the product. If we named out hypothetical cereal “Candy Colored Sugar Cubes”, we might get a lot of kid support but not many adults (who like to feel like they make the decisions) would allow their children to get it. A more subtle approach is needed, I propose putting dots on the sides of the cubes and naming them “Vegas Vinnie’s Magic Dice”. Hey, Vegas is trying for a kid friendly image, I’m sure one of the major hotels there would be interested in a tie-in.
Mascot is key, it must be cartoon, kid focused, and most likely the supplier of the cereal (if not, then actively trying to steal it). Mascots can also serve as a nostalgia grab for adults who want to recapture their childhood but this comes when the cereal is tried and tested. A generation or more has to pass before nostalgia can be used. This is the 90’s, lasting value is out, go in for the short run. Based on the name I’ve chosen for the cereal, the choice is obvious: a cartoon gambler. Picture it: a guy in a pinstripe suit, looks like a real high-roller, but since were going for the kid market we don’t have him play craps or anything. He’ll play board games with the kids instead, while eating the cereal and having fun at a Vegas hotel.
Which brings us to advertising, kids don’t buy anything that’s not on television. The best time to find kids is Saturday morning; the commercial should run once every half-hour on every network showing cartoons or other kid stuff. Advertising needs to be stepped up during the summer, if kids aren’t’ getting up for school they’re less likely to eat breakfast. We need to have them want to eat “Vegas Vinnie’s Magic Dice” for lunch and dinner too. Of course with summer comes nice weather and kids may go outside where the television isn’t. This is easily solved by a promotional offer. If we offer a free Frisbee (shipping and handling extra) with so many boxes of cereal eaten, we can sell more cereal and the kids will see the advertising even when they’re out in the fresh air. A bigger threat is summer camp, kids away from television for weeks at a time, potentially without any “Vegas Vinnie’s Magic Dice” to eat. Solution: provide the summer camp with free cereal, the kids eat the cereal all summer and when they come home they beg their parents for it.
Another key to a successful children’s cereal is variety. Kids get bored easily, if you don’t give them something different once in a while (while still keeping things the same) they’ll get bored and stop eating. So, without further ado: “Vegas Vinnie’s Magic Dice” with marshmallows. The marshmallows can be in fun shapes, the Luxor hotel’s pyramid or the MGM grand’s lion. Sure the freeze-dried marshmallows in cereal are crunchy but so are sugar cubes. Novelty is what will get the kids to eat it, keep changing out the marshmallows and the colors of the sugar cubes and they’ll keep coming back for more.
Make sure to “enrich” the cereal with vitamins. To make it “Part of a balanced breakfast”. Yeah, and by the same logic chocolate cake is part of a balanced dinner. But this doesn’t matter, if you make it sound like it’s healthier than eating a bowl of corn syrup that’s what counts. The illusion of health is all that matters in America these days (pure sugar is fat free). Vitamins won’t win you kids but it’s a necessary evil, somehow people have come to think that if we put enough vitamins in cereal, cookies and junk food we won’t have to eat vegetables. This isn’t as objectionable when you realize that vegetables don’t have as high a profit margin as cereal does.
Holy cow! I’m starting to think like I’m in marketing, this is scary, I think I’d better stop before I go any further. Till next time.
