Insight Into General Mills’ “Cheerios Moments of Good” Campaign
November 20, 2019![](/contentimage/mic/Newsstand/mm-blog-2019-11-chantal-smith-qanda-800.jpg)
General Mills and its lead agency, Geometry, took home a REGGIE Award earlier this year for their Cheerios “Moments of Good” campaign. The ANA’s Denise McDevitt spoke with Chantal Smith, creative director at Geometry, about the campaign.
Q. What trends are you seeing when it comes to the investment’s brands are making in experiential marketing?
Brands are seeing experiential marketing as a standalone channel that can evolve and be built upon year over year, rather than acting as a punctuation mark on a larger, more traditional marketing campaign.
Q. How did you come up with the Big Idea for "Cheerios Moments of Good"?
The initial idea came in partnership with General Mills and Shopperworks, who were tasked with bringing to life the Moments of Good campaign in the retail environment. We ideated on how we could create live, authentic, surprise moments in store, leading with a ‘content first’ approach, what would be compelling to watch? Why would I care? What would make me smile? We scoured the internet for stories of people who were doing good in their community then planned how we could reward them based on their needs, creating surprise and delight for the recipient, the shopper, and the viewer.
Q. What factors contributed to your selecting the brand activation strategies/touchpoints that were in your winning program?
Strategically we wanted to create genuine, feel-good emotions around Cheerios that was removed from the more transactional tactics like sweepstakes and discounts that are traditionally used in store. Once we had identified the recipient of the Moment of Good a lot of time and effort went into making sure that this would be a total surprise, this really drove all our decisions from the first outreach by our team, to getting the person to visit their local Walmart and ultimately to the big reveal and how we captured it.
Q. What was the biggest take away/key learning for you and your team in this experience?
People love a surprise and are grateful for any help they can get, it was amazing seeing family, friends and coworkers rally around creating a moment for someone deserving of good. There’s a lot of heart for Cheerios so it felt natural to come from a brand like this.
Q. What advice would you give a brand that doesn’t have a large budget to spend on activations?
It’s really all about how you can make a consumer feel, that as a brand you understand them, their daily struggles and little wins. You can spend a lot of money building an activation that looks amazing but is lost on the consumer if you don’t make them feel something. Winning a Reggie shows that experiential is a powerful tool and that can create culturally relevant brand interactions that not only move their hearts, but their wallets too.