How Magic Spoon capitalized on childhood nostalgia: Brand breakdown
Launched in April 2018 and cofounded by Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz, Magic Spoon is a high-protein keto-friendly cereal. While the idea behind a healthy- conscious cereal isn’t particularly revolutionary, Magic Spoon is unlike any healthy cereal brand you’ve seen.
Let’s take a look at what makes Magic Spoon’s brand unique 👇👇
Ugh… health food
Before we get started, it’s important to have some context on how traditional health foods approach marketing and branding. Most health food brands follow similar guidelines: neutral colors with the exception of an accent color: yellow to signify “goodness” or green to appear “natural”, minimal illustrations, and lead with text. With those guidelines in place, what you get is a brand that feels sleepy, a little dull and for a lack of a better word, boring.
Separately, it’s also important to note that for decades cereal companies have put on some of the most successful and iconic marketing campaigns and won over the heart of the US consumer. Who doesn’t remember Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam? Or eating a bowl of cereal on a Sunday morning while going through the games on the back of the box? Magic Spoon understood that their audience that had a deep love for cereal as kids but later developed a health-conscious mindset and stopped eating it. They also realized that the love for cereals went past just the food itself.
Branding for a feeling
But recreating this feeling is no easy feat. Magic Spoon had to evoke nostalgia without being perceived as a typical morning meal full of sugar. They had to appear playful yet premium enough for consumers to willingly purchase the cereal priced at $10/box no less.
To transport everyday people from their boring life to the world of Magic Spoon, they tasked Brooklyn-based design agency Gander with creating the identity, packaging, website, and photography. Garner ultimately landed on the design and worked with illustrator Levi Jacobs to transport the average person to a new yet familiar world without it feeling too childish.
To evoke the feeling of Saturday morning cartoons, they created playful, colorful, character-based cereal boxes. Each box has a unique character, from a wizard on a rabbit to a cowboy riding a dinosaur. Not to mention, the product itself also evokes nostalgia. The cereal flavors were intentionally picked to resemble the flavors we grew up with: Cocoa, Fruity, Frosted, etc.
On the back of the box, there are puzzles that tie the loved experience of enjoying a bow of cereal together. All of these elements combined and modernized make pulling out a box of Magic Spoon much more delightful than any other adult cereal competitor.
Now make it digital
So with a clear audience insight and product-market-fit what’s left is distribution and awareness. Unexpectedly, Magic Spoon distributes all their products online and is the first digitally-native cereal brand we’ve seen.
Digital by design
As far as the buying experience goes, buying cereal online or as a subscription service would’ve sounded absurd 10 years ago. But with the recent movement of DTC brands across many categories, consumers have grown accustomed to purchasing almost anything online, if you can buy a mattress or a pair of glasses online, why not a box of cereal?
Their website is simple and to the point, and follows a traditional DTC website structure: What is the product, followed by testimonials, focus on transparency (the ingredients), and close with a CTA.
Get people (AKA influencers) talking
About half of their first round of financing went to writing small checks to health and wellness influencers and appearing on podcasts. They targeted people that loved the concept and the brand. They shared product samples and worked with real were people who wanted to back the brand in a meaningful and authentic way and conversations grew.
So what did we learn?
Years after the launch, Magic Spoon is still only available for purchase online and excelling due to its distinct brand personality. Their unique insight is what makes Magic Spoon different, they made a cereal you felt good eating while keeping all the fun and comfort we came to expect from this food. My top takeaways from Magic Spoon’s brand success are the following:
- Spend the time understanding your audience: Whats your unique user insight? Magic Spoon was not just trying to recreate the loved cereal, instead, they’re just making it grow up with the new consumer needs.
- Take the time to find the right creative team: When designing a brand from the ground up, creative matters. The wrong creative decisions and you could be left with another health food brand that blends into the crowded cereal market.
- Positioning is key: While I don’t know for sure, I assume there were conversations around whether or not to position this product for kids or adults. And while the brand feels more playful, the product is clearly for adults that grew up with the cereal. Ultimately this is what makes them so unique.
All around, I’m a fan of the brand and personally eager to try the cereal myself. Unfortunately for me, they don’t ship to New Zealand so if anyone at Magic Spoon is reading this, please send me a box 🙏💞
References:
https://www.instagram.com/levijacobss/
https://thehustle.co/gabi-lewis-magic-spoon-the-hustle/
https://thedieline.com/blog/2020/2/6/how-to-design-a-10-cereal
https://fortune.com/2020/05/04/startup-year-one-magic-spoon-cereal-food-industry/
