Global Ads Spotlight: Pop Tarts and The First Edible Mascot!

In today’s digital world, where the marketplace is cluttered with innumerable brands fighting to grab eyeballs through their innovative marketing strategies, well-known American toaster pastries’ brand Pop-Tarts hit the bulls eye through their thoughtful marketing campaign.

Pop-Tarts, which has been around for six decades, is no stranger to the folks who grew up on its staple diet. When the brand decided to position itself amongst the younger cohort of the audience, what better way than positioning itself as a snack than as a breakfast, and that too through ‘Edible Mascot?’

What is Pop Tarts - The First Edible Mascot?

To position itself as a sought-after snack amongst the youth, Pop-Tarts entered American College Football at the centre of the Pop-Tarts Bowl experience. But, on venturing into that territory, they were met with many other brands and their mascots who were not doing anything ‘different’.

With a challenge ahead of them, Pop-Tarts came up with ‘The First Edible Mascot’ who came out of a giant toaster ready to be nibbled. With the chatter spread far and wild across the media who were perplexed on the mascot being ‘Edible’, what made the campaign worth the watch was the display of the social media reactions which made the brand and the mascot the talk or chatter of the town.

What further catapulted the mascot to fame was its sacrifice which indeed became a ‘story’. As one could see it enter the toaster and come out of the other end, it was completely devoured like a zombie, with just its eye spared.

The marketing strategy indeed turned out to be fruitful, as the campaign received critical acclaim garnering 4 billion impressions. Further, the Pop-Tarts Bowl had 1500 percent more mentions than the competing sponsors, and had 926 percent return on sponsorship. And, guess what? In the eight weeks following the game compared to the eight weeks prior, 21 million more Pop-Tarts were sold.

What makes the campaign a must-watch is it being visually rich, especially its virality across social media, and it being a subject of discussion even for memes. Further, the intro of the campaign which began on an old advertisement of Pop-Tarts, owned by Kellanova, does kick nostalgia and induces brand value recall.

The campaign, which was executed by Weber Shandwick, won a Grand Prix in the brand activation and experience category at the Cannes Lions in 2024.

Pop-Tarts - The First Edible Mascot, serves as a case study for the ad world, that in a marketplace cluttered with brands including the new-age ones, innovative thinking or marketing does the trick, which not just drives footfall, and reaffirms one’s position not just in their dominant category, but in the arena they want to enter into.

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