Kellogg’s Serves Up a Winning Compilation

Kellogg’s launched its latest masterbrand campaign from Leo Burnett, “Whatever You Do, We Do Breakfast”, in early 2020, and it’s been running intermittently ever since, re-airing this month. Each 30 second ad is a compilation of linked mini-sketches of people enjoying a Kellogg’s breakfast in a variety of mildly quirky ways. A Dad treads on a toy while trying to sneak a bowl of cereal. Two campers at a festival share breakfast in a rainstorm. An influencer makes sure to photograph his cereal before he eats it. And so on.

The benefits of this format are clear. It means each TV advert can be slightly different as it switches in different sketches. It means the Kellogg’s masterbrand can showcase different product lines (like Coco Pops or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes) without overcrowding. And it shows how Kellogg’s is a brand for anyone who enjoys breakfast, in any circumstances.

The ads have performed well in Test Your Ad – extremely well, in fact. Unusually for a compilation-style ad like this, every iteration of it we’ve tested has managed to hit 5-Stars, with star ratings ranging from 5.0 to 5.5. This is an exceptional performance, and the short-term Spike Ratings and Brand Fluency scores are just as good.

What’s interesting about these Kellogg’s scores is that they’re so consistent. Usually with compilation ads, a brand has made stronger and weaker scenes and the scores rise and fall depending on which scenes are prominent in any given version of the ad. But that hasn’t happened here, which tells us two things. First, that the ads have hit exactly the right cheerful and amusing tone to appeal to people and managed to stick to it. But second, that there’s probably a unifying factor at work beyond the individual scenes.

You don’t have to watch many of the ads to figure out what that might be. The “Whatever You Do…” ads are a brilliant example of getting your soundtrack right. Plastic Bertrand’s New Wave hit from 1977, “Ca Plane Pour Moi”, has exactly the bouncy, joyful, but eccentric vibe the campaign in general is aiming for. (When you Google the campaign the results are full of people trying to find out what the track is.) The song knits the segments in each ad together, unifying them into a warm-hearted whole. It’s impossible to imagine the campaign without it, and difficult to see how it might have been such a success with a different song.

Creative agency credit: Leo Burnett