Kellogg Co. has signed a two-year corporate sponsorship deal making Frosted Flakes, its top-selling kids brand, the official breakfast cereal of the NHL and the NHL Players' Association in the United States.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but a source familiar with the deal said the league will get about $1 million over the two years.
Beginning in February, Kellogg will activate behind its new sports affiliation with an NHL Supercharged Challenge promotion. The contest runs through the regular season and offers eight trips for two to the Stanley Cup Finals as top prizes.
The contest can be entered online at tonythetiger.com, where Kellogg's spokescharacter will be featured in a hockey "advergame"; at the league's touring ice and in-line hockey events, which Kellogg will help sponsor; and as part of "Supercharged Nights," starting in March with at least five NHL clubs: Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York Rangers and Washington.
Consumers will enter at local cereal retailers to participate in promotions where fans get to shoot at Tony the Tiger in goal for the right to go to the Stanley Cup Finals. Those club nights are expected to be supported with local retail tie-ins and advertising.
While winners get to have their pictures taken with the Stanley Cup, NHL officials assured SportsBusiness Journal that hockey's top prize will never be filled with sugared flakes in support of the new sponsorship.
Kellogg will produce at least 2 million NHL-themed boxes of Frosted Flakes, along with hockey-themed point-of-sale advertising. The NHLPA rights won't be leveraged immediately, aside from possible player appearances, but they give Kellogg the opportunity to do promotional boxes featuring the Stanley Cup-winning team and possibly a premium using players. While the NHL has a cereal deal in Canada with Post, the Kellogg deal is thought to be the NHL's first U.S. cereal deal, outside of some short-term efforts that yielded commemorative boxes.
Cereal marketers generally don't buy in-game media, nor do they pay huge rights fees. Properties covet them, though, since they get their sport in front of kids. They also allow leagues to demonstrate their marketing prowess to big marketers such as Kraft that own cereal brands.
"Multibrand packaged-goods companies are always a great affiliation," said Andrew Judelson, the NHL's group vice president of corporate marketing, "and teaming with Lego and Kellogg's with new deals in the past few months gives us increasing relevance with kids."
