Chocolate cereals tend to receive a lot of bad press. Mothers are reluctant to buy them for their children - despite being pestered - because they perceive them to be unhealthy. Weetabix, one of the biggest players in the breakfast cereal market, was in the process of launching a new variety, Weetabix Chocolate, which had half the sugar of the average chocolate flavoured cereal. Its new cereal was also low in salt, high in fibre and fortified with vitamins and iron - good news for mums and a delicious treat for kids.

Weetabix asked us to find an impactful way to make parents aware of Weetabix Chocolate and communicate the healthy message. To achieve these goals, we needed to capture the interest of our target audience - mothers with 5-11 year-old children. Our Shopper Journey Analysis tool identified the need to engage with mothers when they were on a discovery shopping mission looking for new products. We then used our Location Ranking tool to apply insights from TGI and use them to find suitable venues for launching our campaign.

We created the 'Happy Breakfast Challenge', a giant breakfast bowl ball-pit filled with white balls to represent milk. Amongst these balls were foam Weetabix shapes, each inscribed with a key health message - low in salt, high in fibre, 100% wholegrain. Shoppers with children were encouraged to find the healthy messages in the 'bowl-pit'. Every child who found all the healthy messages was rewarded with a full-sized 24 biscuit pack of Weetabix Chocolate. Samples with coupons on the back were given out to other shoppers.

149,568 samples were distributed There were 11,240 ball-pit engagements 10,000 full-sized packs were distributed 3,813 data-capture entries were processed 2,556 coupons were redeemed Results exceeded initial forecasts, which meant we beat our ROI prediction by 16.4%

Client testimonial: "smp really got under the skin of the brand and thoroughly understood the challenges we faced. Their knowledge of Experiential Marketing is second to none, and topped with offering a robust reporting and measurement tool to evaluate the success of the campaign, they were an invaluable extension to our marketing team on this project." Ben Cooper, Group Brand Manager, Weetabix.