A dynamic and multi-dimensional creative platform

For more than 35 years, Cinnamon Toast Crunch has been a beloved household staple known for its distinctive cinnamon-sugar flavor. General Mills sought to reinforce category leadership by extending this iconic brand beyond traditional breakfast boundaries into a dynamic and multidimensional creative platform.

With no change to this unique and much-loved product, the new design needed to be the key differentiator to take the Cinnamon Toast Crunch brand to a whole new level in an increasingly competitive category dominated by heavyweight cereal giants and lifestyle-led innovators. We needed a big idea to elevate their brand communication and activate their equities beyond the cereal aisle and into the real world of tweens.

We created the Cinnamon Toast Crunch "Cinnaverse" – an extra'more'dinary realm encouraging tweens to embrace their authentic, weird, and wonderful selves as an antidote to the digital disconnection they felt. Central to this are the "Cinnamojis" – expressive characters that enable tweens to communicate their personalities and feelings in real time across digital and physical spaces. The visual system creates a fluid, agile identity that immerses the senses across all touchpoints – from packaging and social media to IRL experiences – inviting fans of all ages to hear the crunch, feel the swirl, and cannonball into the vibrant Cinnaverse.

In a tough and ever-changing economic and market climate, our Cinnamon Toast Crunch refresh drove category growth (the category went from being in decline with –0.9% dollar volume to +5.7% dollar volume post-redesign), surpassed the competition (becoming the fastest-growing kids’ cereal brand for two consecutive years), and opened up a new world of multi-sensory experiences for its fans (with a return on design investment achieved in less than one month).