Very clever ad campaign…

I’ll admit it. I’m not like most people, probably. I take an interest in commercials – not the products, but the way they’re advertised.

Many are the run of the mill type. Some are awful. But some gems do come around.

One such series of commercials is the current campaign for Shreddies cereal. For those who don’t live in Canada or the UK and therefore have never seen Shreddies, they’re little squares of whole wheat, with a little malt flavouring in them. You can find out more from this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shreddies

The latest Canadian campaign started in January 2008, and is the most clever ad campaign I’ve ever seen. The current commercial talks about a new version of Shreddies (called Diamond Shreddies). The purpose of the ad is to determine which version of the Shreddies consumers prefer: the “old” square or the “new” diamond.

But here’s the trick. Diamond Shreddies are actually square Shreddies, but turned 45 degrees! The only difference between the two is the packaging. The reason I find it clever is that cereal companies are constantly updating their packaging anyway, with promotional items and so on. So it was no big stretch to create updated “Diamond Shreddies” graphics and print a set of boxes with them, along with boxes of the original square version of the cereal. You’ll actually see both boxes on store shelves, but the contents of both are identical!

As part of the campaign, there is a website where you can vote for your favourite version of Shreddies. You can look at videos about the “new” design of the cereal. Take a look!

http://diamondorsquare.com