The Cereal Man

SGK was approached by our partners at General Mills to develop a PR moment around a partnership with Got Milk? We were given a blank creative canvas to bring a full campaign to life. Our concept revived the vintage milkman persona, with a modern twist.

Nostalgia is a powerful emotional driver we wanted to tap into as we launched the campaign on national cereal day. ‘The Cereal Man’ was introduced with a :30 second spot that aired on General Mills social platforms. Then our custom cereal van hit the pavement in Los Angeles to personally deliver seeding kits to Tik Tok influencers, push the campaign forward on social and generate additional heat. The primary influencers involved generated more than 24 million impressions within the first week, challenging like-minded personalities and their followers to partake in the #CerealMilkStacheChallenge. We shipped another thirty kits to instagram personalities and delivered twenty media kits as well.

The creative team dreamed up every detail of this campaign from the van badge to the delivery uniform patch. We imagined the Cereal Man and branded him with a vintage look harkening back to monikers of the General Mills origin story. The video spot was shot on location in the LA area, during the COVID lockdown. We navigated unprecedented challenges, directed shots over facetime, and even created a custom score inspired by ‘Leave It To Beaver’ with a modern twist.

When the dust settled, our Cereal Man had delivered over 45 million unique impressions, winning our campaign the prestigious AdWeek Award for Experiential Activation by a Packaged Goods Brand.

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Creative Direction: Aaron Carlsson
Lead Design: Tim Weakland
Art Direction: Derek Walker
Account Management: Bryan Humphreys
Project Management: Becca Telthorster
Project Engineering: Greg Schaal

Video Direction: Tim Weakland
DP / Editing: Dustin Tolman
Animation: Derek Rutkai
Music: Good Bye Calev
Casting + Styling: Slug Agency
Still Photography: Mac Shoop + Shots by Starks
Vehicle Build: Picture Car Warehouse