The breakfast cereal space is not one that people generally associate with innovation, breaking norms, and driving culture forward. But in the last few years, through brand experiences, Reese’s Puffs has upended the cereal game by behaving more like a lifestyle brand and less like your everyday, ordinary purveyor of boxed breakfast food.

Why? Reese’s Puffs fans themselves. At the forefront of culture, they are diverse and multifaceted teen culture creators who are unapologetically themselves and build connections through their niche interests that step into the forefront of music, art, design, fashion, gaming, and beyond.

After three years of successful collaborations with music partners like Travis Scott and Lil Yachty, we had to take our partnership beyond music, to tap into a new passion point. In order to maintain credibility, our next collaboration had to be unique and phenomenal.

In 2021, Reese's Puffs decided to take a subset of this culture that was previously less attainable to them and bring it to every cereal aisle across the country.

Art.

We teamed up with renowned Brooklyn artist KAWS, to drop two, once in a lifetime, special edition cereal boxes and AR game, creating a buzz we’ve only seen in sneaker drop culture, by bringing the art world to Gen Z directly.

Our collaboration saw us handing over our brand and cereal box for KAWS to design. KAWS began his career doing graffiti in New York in the 90s but has recently gained global popularity for his COMPANION toy figures which appear at museums, shows and in celebrity homes. By tapping into Gen Z hype culture, we sought to bring our fans the ultimate, exclusive experience.

We launched a national retail design and a coveted online, exclusive premium box. But a new partnership isn’t enough to wow our teens. We know that with each collaboration, we need to one-up ourselves. That’s why we added an AR game, KAWSPuffs, challenging fans to pop the falling puffs in time to prevent their KAWS toy from sinking into a cup of milk. We made the experience more engaging by awarding weekly high scorers with limited edition KAWSPuffs boxes.

Our signature vibrant orange box, with the KAWS design, hit the grocery stores nationwide. This was onsale for $3.99, making KAWS’ art accessible and affordable for fans. A unique, blue collectors’ box was released on November 17, sold via a dedicated KAWS and Reese’s Puffs microsite (www.kawspuffs.com), was available for $49.99.

To access the game, we created a web experience and drove people to download the KAWSPUFFS app to compete and win limited edition prizes. Each week, the top 10 players with the highest scores will win one of 150 exclusive blue KAWSPUFFS boxes. And, as an added bonus for super fans, the top two scores on Saturday mornings won one of 30 total boxes signed by KAWS.

Reese’s Puffs succeeded in moving the brand beyond pop culture association into something far more integrated.

We created a new space where creativity and customer engagement is tangible, unscripted and playful—which is what our corner of the cereal market is all about.

We broke creative barriers between the Reese’s Puffs brand and the surrounding culture, and it worked:

• Reese’s Puffs year-on-year sales increased by 17% during this time.

• The exclusive collector boxes sold out online within minutes priced at $49.99.

• Over 4 million of the limited-edition boxes were sold at retail.

• With no paid media dollars, this earned over 465 million impressions.

By acting differently than every other brand in the space, and not holding too tight to every element of our identity, Reese’s Puffs has caught the eye of collaborators around the world who see the brand as a partner for their own exciting ventures. Not too shabby for a humble cereal box.