Instead of simply telling consumers that their favorite athletes eat Wheaties for breakfast every day, we decided to reinvent the entire brand by creating a new cereal designed for and by today’s champions. We were involved in every step of the creation of Wheaties FUEL, including box and logo design, name creation, and even the choosing of ingredients.In an unprecedented move, we also enlisted 5 top athletes to co-create Wheaties FUEL: NFL MVP Peyton Manning, the world’s top ranked decathlete Bryan Clay, MLB American League MVP Albert Pujols, NBA MVP Kevin Garnett, and triathlon champion Hunter Kemper. The process was captured in a 22-minute documentary that ran on a Wheaties microsite and aired on ESPN. The campaign also included print and TV components and a Most Valuable Tweeter (MVT) contest, which allowed football fans to talk about the Superbowl during the Superbowl using Twitter.

The Wheaties FUEL “webumentary” aired in the summer of 2009, followed by a limited release of Collector’s Edition Wheaties FUEL only available online.Wheaties FUEL cereal boxes went on supermarket shelves in January 2010. At the same time, the first of 3 TV spots airing nationwide, and a 3-page fold out print ad ran in Men’s Health Magazine.To get Wheaties into the superbowl instead of spending 3 million bucks on an ad we created Most Valuable Tweeter. The site tracked tweets during the superbowl, creating leaderboards from which the funniest, most relevant, original tweeter was selected. The winner received a signed Wheaties Fuel merchandise by the real MVP, Peyton Manning. A 12-minute cut down of the webisodes aired on ESPN in late February, and a full 30-minute TV program has since aired on Fox nationwide.

Throughout the NFL playoffs this year, the NFL broadcast desk was branded with the Wheaties FUEL logo, while webisode snippets were played during the NFL Scouting Combine and the NFL Draft.

There were over 5 million boxes delivered during the 12 week launch period- the largest non-Cheerios single-SKU launch on record since the merger of General Mills / Pillsbury. It was the seventh largest single- SKU launch overall.

There was a 40% delivery volume growth in fiscal year 2010 for the Wheaties Franchise. Wheaties FUEL was launched in the 3rd quarter so there was only 5 months of volume to drive this significant volume and share growth.

Is #1 Big G Adult SKU consistently at Kroger since launch.

Consistently 2 times above hurdle at Wal-Mart since launch.