Kellogg Touts Black Colleges
Kellogg Co. has cast Tony the Tiger as a booster for historically black colleges with a $230,000 sponsorship deal.
Kellogg is sponsoring five HBCU Classic football games, organized by Historically Black Colleges and Universities. As part of the deal, Kellogg is funding $230,000 in scholarships and contributions, and hosting stadium activities at each game.
Kellogg’s “Sounds of Gr-r-reatness Drumline” corps performs for football fans before games and in parades, with a Battle of the Bands between teams’ marching bands during each game.
Kellogg also hosts a spin-and-win wheel with prizes including Tony the Tiger dolls. On-field promotions include a football toss. Contestants get a $250 gift card from grocer Publix for each toss that makes it through a hole in a giant Frosted Flakes box.
Kellogg recruited six musicians (and one emcee) from the HBCU schools and other colleges to form its own Drumline to perform at games specifically to extend its sponsorship. Marching bands at HBCU schools are traditionally as big a draw as the football teams themselves. The players appear on the front of 300,000 boxes of Frosted Flakes, and recorded three ringtones that fans can download for free at Kellogg.com. The corps also makes at least one retail appearance, performing at an Atlanta Publix store for a radio live-remote broadcast.
Kellogg also puts school-specific graphics on those 300,000 boxes of Frosted Flakes in 10 states (California, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania). Those packages carry a mail-in offer for HBCU apparel from Russell Athletic. Local tie-ins with grocers in Orlando and New Orleans, the site of sponsored games, include radio and in-pack support. Career Sports & Entertainment, Atlanta, handles the program for Battle Creek, MI-based Kellogg.
