Chex: Ralston Foods and Waters Molitor invent Chex Warrior - a CD-ROM game to help increase sales for the Chex brand

Brandweek, March 9, 1998 by Stephanie Thompson

Ralston Foods' Chex cereal brand can boast a 75-year history and ranks 10th in the venerable 300-brand ready-to-eat cereal category. But in a grocery aisle being squeezed by price brands on one side and bells and whistles from Kellogg and General Mills on the other, Chex, wielding a relative pittance in marketing support, had slipped down on consumers' list of top-of-mind brands, a daunting challenge to remedy since most of the latter spend a whopping 40-45% of sales on marketing.

Looking both to reclaim consumer attention and contemporize the brand, Ralston Foods and promotion agency WatersMolitor, Minneapolis, decided to tech up the brand, not via your usual sweepstakes or giveaway of a promotional partners' merchandise, but by weaving the brand into its own CD-ROM game. Determining the brand's strongest equity was in its unique square waffle shape and that the bulk of sales for Chex was among higher income households with children, WatersMolitor came up with Chex Quest, a CD-ROM game that personified the waffle square into the "Chex Warrior." Chex Quest, built based on the game engine for popular CD-ROM game Doom and invoking Chex's own equity story and imagery--the villains want to make everybody's cereal soggy--was placed in 5.7 million boxes of Rice, Corn and Wheat Chex. To help diminish costs, Chex brought in America Online as a partner, offering 50 free hours of AOL on the software in addition to the game.

A first-person, 3-D game similar to the Doom generation of games, which retail for $30, Chex Quest not only offered consumers a hefty perceived value but also a long-term interaction with the brand.

"As consumers play the game, they are interacting with our character and hence our brand equity, which is very different from a passive ad that runs for 30 seconds," said Dori Molitor, president of WatersMolitor. "Someone is probably playing the game right now and it will be played for years to come."

Looking for that all-important in-aisle attention, Chex flagged the promo with 2'x3' in-store displays. To give the promo additional legs, packages also directed consumers to the Chex promotional Web site to download a game sequel, Chex Quest 2, which only consumers who had the original game engine from boxes could play. Plus, in the midst of promotion planning, Chex was sold to General Mills, which added TV advertising to the support arsenal.

Chex Quest was a success, building a 295% increase in incremental volume over base and increasing volume share 48% versus the previous year. Emails, calls and letters keep pouring in from parents of kids who have enjoyed the game and from adults who--let's face it--play the game themselves. Most importantly, the promotion drove trial from consumers who hadn't purchased the product in months or even years, a crucial component to bringing Chex back on the radar screen.

Program Chex Quest CD-Rom Promotion

Marketer Ralston Foods, St. Louis

Agency WatersMolitor, Minneapolis

Key players Ralston: Josh Field, former group marketing director of Chex Cereal

WatersMolitor: Dori Molitor, president; Tom Gunderson, vp/acct dir