Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain and the Tea Trolley

In my first proper job after college, we had a tea trolley lady who went up and down the building twice a day bringing the tea and biscuits. We could get the stuff at other times as well, but the daily ritual was nice, it always came with a serving of gossip ;)

Nutri-grain now have a micro-site with a petition to bring back the tea trolley, as a promotion for their between meal snacks to keep the brain active. A nice idea, relevant to the product and fertile with things you can do around it. But Kellogg’s* seem to have done their usual digital thing and failed miserably. It seems that every time I look at a site from this company I just despair, as they just fail. (I reviewed a US Special K site that had me tearing my hair out at one point, it annoyed me so much). Here’s some reasons why I dislike this so much.

• The TV ad does not have a URL to get you to the site
• The videos on the site are not embeddable. After some digging, one of the videos appears to be on YouTube as an ‘official copy’ but they appear to be doing NO promotion given the views. The production company copy , Cowshed Productions, has been more popular.

• There’s no indication of WHY I should sign the petition. Where is it going, what is going to happen to it. When I add some (completely false) data to the petition, it gives me the option to send to my colleagues and print out for my boss. It seems more of a way just to collect email addresses than to get people requesting tea trolleys back. I think they would have better providing tools for people to start their own campaign, give them print out posters and petitions to use in the office, not an online version.
• Also, what are they doing with all those email addresses? There’s no opt-out option on the sign up form, to stop them sending me emails. There’s no indication of what will happen if I give them my colleagues’ emails, except a statement requesting that I make sure my friends don’t mind receiving mail from Kellogg’s. After doing a lot of these types of things, it seems this is breaking all the best practice rules that I know.
• According to the email I got about the campaign there’s some kind of contest, to win a tea trolley and to send your boss on holiday. I can’t find anything about this on the front page, nor further in. Is there a contest or not, Good Relations?

One thing they have done well is in the promotional part. They filmed the sexy baker boy (and girl) out and about in London with their tea trolley and then going into workplaces and asking about break behaviours. All of the workplaces in the film are magazines – I’d bet that each of the mags featured will have some kind of story about Nutri-grain in it. That was a good idea PR company, whoever you are.

*err if I’m talking about the master brand on it’s own do I need to apostrophe s? It seems so from the website, But Kellogg’s what