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Did you know that a bowl of honey nut Cheerios can turn your creativity on? Or that the Cheerios box, with all the colors and images can make you start to think about cool things?
Image: I Love Cheerios by Her Royal Jilliness’
I am not sure about the Cheerios nutrtion, and I am actually not sure about who invented Cheerios, but I know this; they are doing a great job when it comes to marketing.
You might think that I need to take a deep dive into the history of Cheerios and to write about how they have been marketing Cheerios for the past 50 years or so, but I really don’t.
I am only talking about my own experience, and why I think that I can learn something from them. Maybe not by eating Cheerios, but by visiting their website.
Think of it, what is Cheerios really?
It’s something you eat. You eat it for breakfast or any other meal, basically, food is all it is. Now, how do you turn something like Cheerios into something “larger” than food?
Well, they are telling their visitors that Cheerios is for everybody. Not just kids.
Cheerios is for parents, kids, families and adults… hmmm, but what about teenagers?
They are using their site to tell us the stories of people who love cheerios and why they love it. They are showing pictures of cute kids with Cheerios cereal in their hair, on their face and everywhere… they are showing families, and sharing stories of people who with some sort of love for their product.
They are doing what Apple have been doing for years. They are turning the focus away from their product and over to the people who are using their product. They are saying stuff like Diana from Houston:
My heart attack changed my life in many ways. Healthier habits became a priority. I believe that women are good at sharing with other women. And I?ve found that sharing my experience with other women has helped many friends seek better, healthier lifestyles, too.
She is not saying anything about Cheerios. Did Cheerios help her life become better, is it because of Cheerios that she has a healthier lifestyle?
What about Lynn from Morgan, saying:
Healthy living to me means a balanced diet that fuels a regular routine of physical exercise of indoor and outdoor activities, a job, socializing, and sleep, which is supported by a strong spiritual and family relationships. It doesn’t sound easy, but it something I live by!
I guess healthy living means she is eating Cheerios, even though it doesn’t say that anywhere.
Smiling faces and healthy people helps a lot when it comes to selling a product.
Now, forget about all the eating part and the healthy part of Cheerios for a second.
What can you do with a box of Cheerios, you get 10 minutes and you are not going to eat it. Be creative…
I have five things that you could do:
What do you think, do you have any alternatives?
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My children have a Cheerios book that has little indentions for them to place cheerios in cars, buttons for teddy bears, to play tic tac toe. Of course, they found another way to use the book and decided that it was much more fun to crush the cheerios between the pages! I wasn’t too happy having to clean up cheerio crumbs.
We like to use them for counting. When they were smaller, cheerios were our way to let the baby play in the high chair and develop their small motor skills as they were trying to grab them and drop them to the floor.
We are a Cheerios Family. Nutrition wise they are a pretty good way to start the day, too!
Hi Jens,
It’s really an amazing stuff. Looking at their website, It’s true as what you said…
They are turning the focus away from their product and over to the people who are using their product.
I guess besides promoting their product, they want to provide information, promote healthier lifestyle to their visitors, and as the image of their product and the logo is everywhere in the website, they subconsciously make the readers remember about their product.
I think that it’s also more effective, people remember more from a picture than words, and it’s a way to engrave their logo into the readers’ mind.
Thanks for sharing this!
Robert
It is amazing how Cheerios has become a multi-generational lifestyle brand.
When I was a kid, you could buy candy bracelets and necklaces. When you wanted a snack, you could just eat one (or 25) candy pieces, until you had no more bracelet. Now, in our health conscious age, you could make a Cheerios bracelet. Instant, portable snacks!
This is great! I have loved Cheerios since I was a kid back in the 60’s. I’ve probably eaten a ton of them in my 47 years.
Cheerios was the first dry cereal my son ate (regular, not Honey-Nut. Now he loves Honey-Nut). He also played with them while he ate them. We just put them on his high chair tray and let him at it. He would make some amazing pictures, and then he would eat them all up.
When he was potty training, we put a few Cheerios in the toilet water so he had something to aim at. (If you don’t have boys, you may not know about this. But boys become much neater and better aimers if you train them to do it as they learn to use the potty).
Now I eat Cheerios because they really do lower your cholesterol. And they also still taste great, just like they tasted when I was a kid. So many things have changed the way they taste because of changes in recipe. Plain Cheerios seems to be exactly the same. I eat Cheerios instead of another healthy cereal because it still tastes great and I don’t feel like I’m eating healthy. I’m just eating something I like that happens to be good for me.
I also take a bag of them with me whenever I’ll be away from the house for awhile. They’re a great snack, too.
I can see why Cheerios can go beyond the product to the people who eat them. They are an ingrained part of our culture, so now our stories about Cheerios are what make the product continually great. We pass down a love of something, a passion for it that’s deep-rooted in our own past and lives on in our daily life.
Isn’t it interesting what blogging has done to your culture. We are talking about food to strangers. Taking about Cherrios has been me hungry. I think I’ll take a break and go eat lunch.
Hi Jens, I like the points you made, something that we all need to remember whether marketing a product or our own brand.
[...] Serving is what STSI lacks of. The whole website is made with the focus on the product. Since the first page you come, you will be handed with all the steps that you need to see to make a purchase decision, from the product info, benefit, price, demo, testimonials, guarantee, catalog, and shopping cart. The whole website is built as if the whole purpose is getting their products sold. This might be the yelling that Seth Godin is trying to refer to. The website lack of the information that is purposely written to benefit the readers. That is serving, and it is necessary to reach the unreachable. Finding that their industry is taxed from the market, STSI need extra effort to change the market perception on subliminal audio. One way is providing useful information, to let their web visitors to understand and believe fully on the effectiveness of the product. This way STSI is able to reach and influence a bigger market. Case Study:Jens P. Berget from SlyMarketing.com has a similar observation on Cheerios website. Here is his compliment on the website… They are doing what Apple have been doing for years. They are turning the focus away from their product and over to the people who are using their product.~Jens P. Berget (Cheerios can help your creativity) [...]
