Cereal Marketing

What could be easier than starting the day with a bowl of cereal? It’s simple, right? Well, not exactly, especially if you’re me. Think of Rachel Ray and her trademark grabbing of an overloaded armful of ingredients. That’s me in the morning with my four boxes of cereal; mixing and measuring like an alchemist seeking to transform base elements into a grainy kind of gold.

It’s not important WHY I do this (quirky accounts for most of it). So the relevant question is really this. What does cereal-making have to do with social marketing?

Repeatable not Repetitious

I love my breakfast mix. That’s how I start most every day. I repeat the process but it never seems repetitious. That’s because I have the freedom to add more raw oats one day, pull back on the bite-size goodness, and regulate the amount of crunchy stuff I choose to chow down on. I’m taking a product and creating my own platform, uh, breakfast. The act of making it mine is a comfortable routine but it’s not boringly repetitious. It’s me being me. It’s mine. I own it.

Personalized Mix

I’m pretty sure that cereal makers didn’t have me in mind (or anyone else for that matter) when it comes to my personalized mix of multiple brands. What’s cool is that the product comes in discrete packages that can be consumed any way you like: by the handful, in a bowl, with lite vanilla soymilk (anyway, you get it and yeah, as my husband reminds me, soy beans produce soy liquid – not milk as he defines it).

But it’s the box, man. The box lends itself to a mash up of massive proportion. It’s made in a factory. It’s churned out on a massive scale and yet I have the ability to make it personal. Here’s the point. Companies that produce a product that acts like a platform are the companies who get ahead. If you can help people do what they do only make it easier, you win.

Your Brand is What I Say It Is

Don’t panic if people use your brand and make it their own. This is opportunity knocking if you know the rule. And the rule is: you’re not the only one who gets to tell people what your brand is. People can now tell you what your brand is to them. That’s the prize that shows up in the box between your ears if you’re ready to listen.