Mar
03
Retro is Back!
Byhttp://adage.com/article?article_id=135015
So according to this article in Adage, General Mills has decided to bring back the retro look of their cereal boxes. Their goal is to make the box and the food appear comforting which will hopefully lead to an increase in sales. One of the most important things that stood out to me was that they are trying to create this as an “exclusive” event. It is also planned to last for a month. And as we learned in class a “good” topic is exclusive and buzzowrthy. Another interesting point is that they are steering away from advertising, and giving all of the power to the bloggers. It will be very interesting to see if the bloggers find this information buzzworthy and worth blogging about!
4 Comments
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:19 pm
It is interesting that their steering away from advertising since I remember how many cereal ads I used to see as a kid on TV. I suppose that means General Mills has put its’ faith into social media marketing. But what I find weird is that their target market is probably something like children ages 5-17 who, most likely, aren’t huge bloggers or blog readers. I’m curious to see how this goes for General Mills, maybe they found their niche in cereal advertising or maybe they found a demise? Time will tell
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I think that this move is good to bring a comfortable feel back to the kitchen table for older generations. Especially in this time of economic stress, bringing back “the good old days” is definitely a valid message. I fear, however, that the people who really drive cereal purchases (children, of course) will have no connection to these images and could even be bored without toys, reflective surfaces, and other current cereal gimmicks. I agree with Tyler, time will tell how this goes…
March 4th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
I really love the look of the retro box, although I have not seen it in stores myself but it does make me want to go buy some just for the box. Our generation has a great deal of trends that are tied back to the “olden days” and it does draw in consumers, especially those in their early 20′s who may not have been around during the original time of the box but we enjoy getting a taste of history. It promotes those days you would wake up early for saturday morning cartoons and eat cereal on the couch with dad. I don’t know about you, but I would give anything to go back to those days and just be a saturday morning kid again. It gives consumers and opportunity to just slow and stop taking so much of the fast life for granite.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
I’m intrigued to find out where these General Mills bloggers are. Do they have specific GM blogs or are they looking to have general bloggers talk up the retro look of General Mills cereal?
I did some research and couldn’t find any information on a direct General Mills blog, but I did find a lot of blog posts about these General Mills retro boxes.
You can find more pictures about the retro packaging here – http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/02/general-mills-retro-cereal-boxes.html