What Growth Actually Looks Like at a Legacy Brand with Doug VandeVelde, Chief Growth Officer at WK Kellogg | Ep. 391

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0:25Welcome to the Marketing Millennials. The No BS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. We are back with another episode of the Marketing Millennials Podcast. Because today we have a very special guest. He's a chief growth officer of WK Kellogg. And we're going to talk about the Super Bowl, but something special that's happening in the Super Bowl with one of my favorite cereals of all time. So excited to talk about it.

1:10But I'll let Doug introduce himself quickly and then we'll get into what Raisin Bran's doing in the Super Bowl. Yeah, great. Thanks, Daniel. Yeah, I'm Doug Vandervelde, Chief Growth Officer, as you say, for WK Kellogg. And I've been with the Kellogg Company for about 28 years now. So love cereal, been around cereal for a long time, and happy to be here and talk about Raisin Bran. Let's kick it off with a serious question. The first serious question, is Raisin Bran your favorite cereal, or is it something else? It's one of my favorites. You know, I mean, being in cereal for so long, I have, like, different cereals for different days.

1:46Raisin Bran is my number one travel cereal. Whenever I'm traveling, I eat Raisin Bran. I eat Raisin Bran. At home, I switch between Raisin Bran, Frosted Mini Wheats, and Kashi. Those are my three favorite. And then when I'm feeling it, you know, at night after work, I usually have a big bowl of Frosted Flakes. You know, I think Raisin Bran is a good dinner cereal, too. It's a good, like, I love Raisin Bran for dinner. But I want to get into why 2026 was the right moment for Raisin Bran to appear at the Super Bowl. Yeah, that's great. I mean, when you look at what's happening in health and what's happening in culture, we really think that fiber is the next big health trend.

2:29You know, I mean, obviously, it's been protein here for the last number of years. But fiber is really on the rise. And, you know, protein is in everything. So if you want to get more protein, it's easy these days. But if you want to get more fiber in your diet, it's not always easy. You know, and in fact, 95 % of people don't get enough fiber. And cereal is the easiest, tastiest, best way to get more fiber in your diet. So with all that happening, we thought, you know, hey, if you need to reach 95 % of people with a message that's highly relevant, where do you go? Well, you go to the Super Bowl.

3:06And that's why we're there. And I think it's cool because I want you to describe why you chose William Shatner as the spot. And then also, I like the play on words, which I think is pretty funny of like, well, Shat, but I think it's, I want to go into why he was chosen. Why was he the spot? Sure. So, you know, I mean, you know that there is a lot of science that supports the importance of fiber in your diet. And we tell that story through the lens of dieticians. But when it comes to the Super Bowl, you know, we wanted to make it lighthearted. We wanted to tell the fiber story in a way that just puts a smile on people's face.

3:46Obviously, there's a lot of use of celebrity to do that in the Super Bowl. And the bar is very high to make good creative that people will, you know, find relevant and maybe have a smile at. So we thought, you know, we have a long history with William Shatner in our company in Kellogg. I mean, 25 years ago, William Shatner was doing the all brand two week challenge commercials. Hard to believe that was 25 years ago. But yeah. And so he he loves fiber. He loves Kellogg. And, you know, we all we like to work with with with celebrities, with influencers who believe in what we believe in. So that was number one.

4:22William Shatner really believes in the importance of fiber. He loves Kellogg. He loves Raisin Bran. And then, you know, creatively, you know, we're working with the Vayner agency and they're excellent. They're very creative people. And so the notion of using William Shatner, who loves us, and then the play on words with his name helps us tell the Fiverr story in a funny and fun way. And so, you know, Will Shat as the shorthand for William Shatner kind of really works as a play on words, you know, in our spots. yeah because i think i mean people who don't get enough fiber are not gonna do what the plan words are talking about so exactly so exactly and and that's like 95 percent like you said americans are dealing with this issue which is good to be the brand that is getting ahead of a trend um instead of like so how do you how do you think about that like how do you think about okay, what goes into making that educated guess of, okay, fiber is the next big thing that we think we're going to double down on?

5:33You know, we obviously do a lot of our own consumer research, you know, so we're constantly talking with consumers, you know, doing research with consumers to say, you know, what are they trying to get more of in their diet? And last year, we saw that for the first time, there were the same percent of people that were trying to get more fiber in their diet, as there were people trying to get more protein in their diet, which is a huge deal. Fiber had been going like that for a number of years. Then you look on, you know, you look at culture, it's something like Instagram, searches for high fiber foods is up 159%, you know, on Instagram.

6:07So those are signals that like, hey, there's something happening here, people are getting more and more interested. You know, there's more and more kind of fancy, high-priced solutions for fiber in your feed if you're interested in that stuff in Instagram. And what we see is like, hey, cereal is there. It's been there the whole time. And it's the easiest, tastiest, best way to get more fiber in your diet. So it's a message that just naturally fits with what people are looking for. You don't have to tell them what cereal is. They've all heard of it. They know what Raisin Bran is. And so it's just a reminder that it's the way to get fiber into your diet yeah and i think i mean i know that i mean the vayner group and then gary v is very big on super bowl ads being like the underpriced attention and if he would do anything do a super bowl ad but i want to go into now the super bowl is is going to happen what is um success look like is it is it more searches of fiber going up is more brands starting to like double down on fiber is and obviously serial sales is probably a big one but what does that what does that look like is like success metrics so i think the first thing is is like you know we want to get engagement you know so again this the super bowl these days is it's an ecosystem of screens it's not just one spot on the day it's the whole week 10 day lead in a lot happens on social media we've been doing a lot on social media over the last 10 days and we've gotten a lot of engagement, great engagement, you know, and I think that's the first KPI, you know, are you getting engagement?

7:41And we've definitely seen that we've seen a tremendous reaction to what we've been doing in social, then you then you say, are you changing sentiment to do more people go? Oh, yeah, I do need more fiber in my diet. And yeah, I am going to consider raisin bran. So we call that sentiment, you know, you change the sentiment. And then ultimately, the ultimate goal is sell more cereal. And that that's obviously our, our goal and our ultimate the KPI and something that we're driving for. This is, you know, the Super Bowl is the kickoff to a year long push on fiber. You know, it isn't the end. It's the start.

8:14And so we've got a whole year's plan. We go right from the Super Bowl right into the Olympics. We'll have our spots on the Olympics and a full year of supporting the fiber message. So, yeah, so it's kind of a journey. And our journey just starts now.

8:59out. from people in the trenches. Last year, over 3 ,500 lifecycle marketers showed up. Join them at cust.io slash TMM. Yeah, it's good to be the brand that's vocal on something that is actually super important to diet that actually. And if you're the first mover, it looks way better than being the person who caters on. But also, it's good because, I mean, it's not like the solution has been around for 25 years, just people aren't having the eyes open. And Raisin Bran is very nostalgic cereal. Definitely. Definitely. I know in your career, you are big at using mascots as like a big proponent on your.

9:52So how do you think about using Sunny as like a big proponent of this Raisin Bran journey? Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah, we love our mascots. Obviously, we got Tony the Tiger. He's the OG. He's the main guy, and he does good in the world. And so Tony and Frosted Flakes is a big thing. Toucan Sam, Fruit Loops. But, you know, Sonny, as the mascot for Raisin Bran, you know, brings a sense of optimism, a sense of joy, things that are kind of elusive in today's world. You know, I mean, people want more optimism. They want more reason to be optimistic. and sunny kind of brings that it's funny we've never really had a a sunny costume you know the way we'll have a tony the tiger costume and tony's always out in the world we had never had a sunny costume until now and uh sunny is actually in our spot you know as you know and sunny will be a lot more kind of out in the world and i think uh that just brings the whole notion of optimism i mean the thing about fiber is the science really shows that it not only is good for your gut health but More and more, it affects your energy level, your mood, and all these things that the optimistic sunny can really have an impact on.

11:06Yeah, I like that. And I also think that brands don't do this often of making their spot more of an educational moment than a selling moment. I think educational content is super important to just get that aha moment. Even if it gets someone that day to be like, wait, have I ate enough fiber today? versus someone who's starting their whole new journey of having more fiber. And then you said that you're doing this throughout the year. What does that look like when you're planning? Okay, I want fiber to be the focus. Raisin Bran is probably the best cereal to do that with. How long ahead do you plan that?

11:48What does the planning look like to make this all happen, that it goes a year long? I mean, it's at least a six-month-in-advance plan. And, you know, you don't have everything all nailed down, but you start working on this six months in advance. But we really, you know, we with Vayner really started working on this in earnest probably three months ago. And the thing that's great is Raisin Bran is in the Super Bowl. But then starting the day after in the Olympics, we'll have our other high fiber cereals on as well. So Mini Wheats and All Brand will also have a William Shatner spot, 15-second spot, that will play along with the Raisin brand for the rest of the year.

12:28So it's three brands that are really going to kind of lead this fiber movement. I mean, it's good to, I think, for any brand to showcase because some people I know, for example, my wife's not a big Raisin person. Yeah, right, exactly. She might not want that cereal. So if you're showcasing other ways through your collection of cereals of how to get fiber. But low-key, there is a – I'm going to just bring this randomly. There's – at Publix, they make this raisin bran. I don't know if it's with the raisin bran muffin. It's the best thing in the world. It's the best thing in the world. Definitely.

13:10We have all bran muffin recipes, raisin bran muffin recipes. Again, just a way to use cereal. to get simply to get fiber into your diet. Yeah. Muffins are a great way to do it. For people who haven't run a Superbowl, like how does it, how does one decide what slot they want and where they should be in the Superbowl? Cause I know a lot of people have different slots and they, it's a big decision where to go because you're spending a good amount of money to do this. How does one decide where we're going to plug ourselves? So we have a really good media agency, Starcom, that works on this with NBC, you know, and you work out, you know, where you want to be in the game.

13:48Is your message relevant to any different part of the game? You know, one of the things we've done this year is we've also bought the streaming. So we bought the Peacock streams the Super Bowl. So we're in the streaming as well. So we bought linear TV through the biggest markets and we've bought the streaming. And so you can have different placements in different, depends on the different buy. You know, in the streaming service, we're going to be right before halftime. You know, that's a time where, you know, everybody's still watching. The game shouldn't be out of hand by then. And so we think that's a good play.

14:20But yeah, it depends on your negotiation with NBC. And, you know, if you get lucky and it's a really close game and you're in the fourth quarter, that's fantastic. It can go the other way too, though. So yeah, so we're in the second quarter and we like that position. And then also, I mean, it's good linear because you could buy with the Olympics, which is also on Peacock NBC. So you can have that, you could have a structure, the deal to be, hey, we want to be here. We want to be here. We're going to be all year. So just let us know what to package that up for. Exactly, exactly. I want to also ask, I know this slot is a big slot, but what is one of your other favorite Kellogg campaigns that you worked on in the past?

15:11Yeah, I have to say a few years ago, we were in the official sponsors of the Olympics, Summer Olympics in London. Remember that 2012? Fantastic, iconic Olympics in London. And we were the proud sponsors of the start. So our kind of premise was that, hey, the finish gets all the glory, the finish gets all the credit, but it all happens at the start. And so we had a swimmer who was swimming forward and then all of a sudden she started swimming backward and it ended with Kellogg's, the start, see you at breakfast. So the start of the day, the start of the race, the start of the Olympics, we were on the opening ceremonies and it was, we were the proud sponsors of the start.

15:51So really another epic campaign, an epic time. I mean, the London Olympics were phenomenal and yeah, and we really drove Kellogg's and the brand equity around Kellogg's as the best start to the day. And I mean, And athletes are very good role models to be able to push this. I mean, they're doing it forever. But I wanted to ask you, the cereal category has evolved a lot over the last 10 years. But what do you see revolving the next decade? And what excites you the most about the future of cereal? Yeah, honestly, I think cereal is ready for a resurgence. I think it's ready to get squarely on trend because it offers the combination of taste, health, and value.

16:38And people need all those things. Everyday people need value products that are both tasty and healthy and cereals right at the center of that. I mean we've got a whole campaign going on right now that talks about how cereals are actually more simple than you think. Like a lot of our cereals only have four ingredients, four natural ingredients, corn, salt, sugar, and malt. That's it. Like a frosted flake. That's all a frosted flake has is four ingredients. And people, when they hear that, they're like, yeah, because they're looking for clean labels, no chemicals. And so that simplicity message really plays well.

17:14Obviously, the fiber, when fiber becomes the next big health trend, that's going to be a big driver, a big driver of cereal. We have Kashi as one of our brands, which is a great product for people who are looking for kind of the modern way to manage their weight. And then there's just basic fun. Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam bring people joy. Joy, again, very elusive in our society today. And so a little bit of joy from a bowl of Frosted Flakes and Tony the Tiger, I think, is value to consumers. So I think cereal is ready for a big resurgence. yeah especially i mean we're talking to this is a lot of a millennial audience and a lot of our millennials have grew up with tony the tiger grew up with yes the major mascots all the time and most of us could probably know all the slogans of all of all these um great but there's been so much noise in the category and right in the health industry over the last year so re-educating on right but going back to the basics of okay there's enough talking about protein everybody everything's adding protein now the most random things now have protein like protein water and stuff like that yeah let's talk about something else that is will go good with having a protein which is exactly with this fiber which that's a great point that you make you know like the combination of protein and fiber especially when you think about a bowl of raisin bran And then the milk that you eat it with, which brings a lot of protein and vitamin D along, like that's like a magic combination, cereal and milk.

18:49And we're doing a lot more marketing in that area as well. And that, you know, the combination of cereal and milk brings the protein and the fiber that you need. And those two things work in a synergistic way for your health. I also want to ask you, what is the role of a chief growth officer look like at Kellogg's? What is your day-to-day look like? What decisions are you making? Because obviously, there's so many moving pieces like Vayner is running this. You have Starcom running buys. You have a whole team to manage. So what does it look like day to day for a chief growth officer? That's a great question.

19:25A lot of companies have gone to chief growth officers because it integrates several very important things and tries to get that all moving in the same direction. So in my world, it's marketing. It's the e-commerce and omni marketing. it's R &D, the product development, and then it's insights and analytics. And the idea is to bring all those groups together. So everyone's moving in the same direction to really drive ideas and drive growth. So I spent a lot of time working at the intersection of products and ideas and insights. And the team, we work together to try and find ways to really break through.

20:06So whereas before companies would have chief marketing officers who would only focus on marketing a chief growth officer really tries to be a more integrated role across those dimensions i just mentioned yeah because i feel like one of the most important parts of marketing is distribution and if you're not part of the distribution the making of a product how are you going to be able to market you're just getting a product and then you have to come up with right a campaign to do it you need to be part of distribution is probably the most important part of a product going to market and if you're not part of the beginning stages of how it's made packaging um what is the major parts and you're not in the in the room at least as a marketer you're you're you're losing so much insight to be able to go to market effectively yeah no that's a fantastic point I think in today's world, you've got to figure out what you want to ultimately end up with in terms of claims and what you want to say.

21:08I mean, we have a great example. We just restaged our Kashi Go lineup where the marketing and the R &D team work together to come up with what the consumer would really want, which is a 10 gram of protein, 10 gram of fiber, single digit sugar product that tasted great. so the r &d team and the marketing team decided that together in the beginning and then they worked together all along to kind of restage that part of the brand and it's gone fantastic because we ended up with a product that the consumer ultimately really wanted yeah i mean even this like wool shot spot i mean yeah the the the number one problem that you are people are having is that they can't go to the bathroom like that's right that's that's like the number one issue that you're solving you're trying to solve the number one issue of so many people i know are leaning on supplementation instead of like food to be able to do this where food is a way better option than supplementation so so you lean on the problem you just do it in a creative way you educate that this your product could do it but it takes a lot of market i mean it takes market research to know that, okay, let's lean on the number and problem of, and how to solve it as fiber.

22:21And we have fiber that solves it. So let's tell everybody how our product in a funny way. And especially, you know, after the Superbowl, there's a lot of people that, you know, don't eat a hundred percent healthy the day of the Superbowl, maybe a few too many drinks. And so the Monday after is the perfect day to be like, Hey, I need to reset my gut health routine because I do not feel good today, you know? And so that's the day, that's the day to go, okay, I'm going to start eating more fiber. I'm going to improve my gut health. That's going to improve my energy overall. And so, yeah, so we just, the Superbowl works for us in so many ways.

22:55And then one question I ask everybody on this podcast is what is a marketing kill you would die on? I think transparency, transparency and truth. You know, there's so much fake in the world today, that if you're a brand that is transparent, and you're real, and you're human, and you're fact based, I think that wins the race in the long term. You know, there's such a temptation to be all sizzly, you know what I mean? But at the end of the day, the marketing hill for me is transparency, truth, humanity, all the things that went over the long term. And what is something that people, if they missed the Super Bowl, that they're missing if they didn't see the ad during the Super Bowl?

23:42I mean, they need to go back and look at Will Shatt. I mean, you know, Will Shatt has been everywhere. And the response has been amazing. I mean, you know, you've seen it in the social. People think William Shatner and Raisinbrand are both national treasures. I just love that so much. You know, so I think he just spans so many audiences. People remember him for so many roles that he did. And again, he's super credible and super authentic. I mean, he's 94 years old. So fiber must be really good for you. If you look and act like he does when you're 94 years old, a lot of people are saying that to us.

24:15So, so yeah, I think it's not just the spots, but it's like people's reaction to the spots. I get so much out of that. Just reading the comments on Instagram or whatever. I think that's, that's part of the Superbowl these days. And I love that social is part of the strategy, too. I think a lot of brands forget, okay, you have a spot, but how do I make this spot go on for a long period of time in social is one of the best ways to do that. Agreed. 100%. I know you have a hard stop, and I want to thank you for coming on. And I'm excited to see all the reactions on social after this goes live. Okay, Daniel, fantastic.

24:56Great to meet you. Great to be on your podcast here. Thank you so much. Okay. Have a good day. Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five-star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.