Last chance to save on Digiday Publishing Summit passes is February 9
Presidential elections are pretty much giant marketing campaigns. They’re also an opportunity for regular brands to draft off them.
That was the opportunity Kellogg’s saw with its Cheez It cracker line. While many know the brand, fewer are aware of its less popular flavors, such as pepper jack and mozzarella. So at the height of the crowded presidential-nomination battle, from January to April, Kellogg’s set up a “Top Cheese” election campaign that pitted the eight flavors against each other. The target audience for the effort was everyday folks who want humor to escape daily pressures.
The brand created a flood of content to drive votes on the Cheez It Facebook page, including a series of hysterical videos. The video content was distributed through paid and owned media. Kellogg had messaging on-pack and on in-store displays. It also had messaging on TV, online and mobile. It also linked up with Sony Playstation, where people would play the game and see various Cheez It messaging throughout the virtual world. Facebook was the main hub for the effort.
There were 620,000 unique voters, resulting in 67 million votes total. Cheez It generated 600,000 new Facebook fans during the run of this campaign. And the average time spent on the Cheez It Facebook page was 2.5 minutes. Most importantly, Kellogg saw double-digit sales growth for each flavor during the life of the campaign.
“We drew a map of the Cheez It consumer and tried to touch them at every point possible,” Kellogg’s associate director of global digital strategy, Bob Arnold, said at the Digiday Brand Summit in Park City, Utah. “That’s really what drove all the engagement.”
More in Marketing
What Amazon’s proposed big-box store could mean for Walmart
Public documents published by the Village of Orland Park described a 225,000-square-foot Amazon store that would sell a range of products.
Future of Marketing Briefing: AI companies are staffing up for a reputation fight
AI has an image problem, which explains why the industry is suddenly investing so much energy in who gets to tell its story.
Albertsons is putting digital screens for ads in more than a third of its stores
The retail giant has seen enough success in its digital screen network to begin a rollout in 800 of its 2,200-plus stores in 2026.