Wednesday, September 9, 2009

General Mills's Wheaties Targets Male Athletes With Wheaties Fuel

Wheaties is already known for their tagline, "Breakfast of Champions," but will be adding, "Fuel. Win. Evolve." to the their new Wheaties Fuel cereal. The new cereal is being billed as "the first-ever cereal designed specifically to help fuel wins." The Wheaties brand is hoping to increase sales by targeting their already 60% male customer base.

With the help of sports nutritionist Dr. John Ivy, three formulations were tested among "everyday athletes" drawn mainly from readers of Men's Health. The new Wheaties Fuel offers whole grains, along with more sugar than the flagship formula, 200 calories, 100% of the RDAs for the five B vitamins; five grams of fiber, and calcium and vitamin D. Fuel "takes advantage of the advances in science of the past 85 years," noted Wheaties marketing manager Dan Stangler, in announcing the formulation.

Fuel is featuring five male star athletes (NFL's Peyton Manning, the NBA's Kevin Garnett, gold medal-winning decathlete Bryan Clay, the MLB's Albert Pujols, and triathlete Hunter Kemper) to be featured not just in marketing, but on the initial "collector's edition" version of the cereal's box. For now, the cereal can be purchased online at Fuel's Web site and will be available in grocery stores nationwide in January 2010.

I think this is an appropriate approach for the Wheaties brand to take. The majority of the Wheaties customer base is already males so I think this will help bump up their sales. Also, by involving star male athletes it will definitely grab the attention of their targeted male audience. With Special K already targeting the women audience, it is about time that males have their own cereal, too.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=113207

2 comments:

Roxanne Riojas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Roxanne Riojas said...

I think that Wheaties is sort of taking the "easy" route by targeting males. Yes, it is 60% of their market, but they should branch out to other markets as well. (Such as child athletes, women athletes, etc.) Wheaties is smart to use well-know male athletes on the box, but they could have also featured famous child/women pro athletes in order to target the other part of the market.