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Wheaties Leverages Pomp In Design Unveil

Wheaties/Willis ReedWhen General Mills' Wheaties cereal brand formally unveiled its latest box design featuring a likeness of NBA Hall of Famer Willis Reed at an event at New York's NBA store on Wednesday, none other than the former Knicks player himself stepped up to pull the wraps from a mockup of the box.

Such pomp and circumstance might be forgiven with Wheaties, whose brand equity is arguably more about the sports icons gracing its boxes than the cereal itself. The 80-plus-year-old brand, which has celebrated the likes of Bruce Jenner, Tiger Woods, Stone Cold Steve Austin, boxer Max Baer and NASCAR racer Cale Yarborough with its "Breakfast of Champions" tag since 1934, is timing the new limited-edition Willis Reed packaging with Black History Month.

The limited-edition package celebrates Reed's on-court performance in 1970 when he helped the Knicks won the NBA Championship, although he played with an injury that forced him to limp.

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Matt Beliveau, associate marketing manager at the Minneapolis-based General Mills, says Reed joins such sports stars as Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, and Julius "Dr. J" Erving among those whose images the company has put on Wheaties boxes in February.

Reed said that he expects his likeness and back story (on the box back) will inspire kids. "They will see the box, hopefully, and ask, 'Who was Willis Reed?' And they'll learn that he was a little boy who wasn't a very good athlete starting out, who came from a town [Hico, La.] with a few hundred people."

Beliveau says Wheaties does several NBA-player-adorned boxes during the year, with recent SKUs featuring Kevin Garrett, and the WNBA Champions.

"If you think about heritage and history, people associate the brand with the people on the box," he says--adding that Wheaties has not gotten lost among the proliferation of products on the cereal aisle because of its bright hue and the rotation of athletes on the packages. "We appeal to sports fans; we skew to male consumers in their 30s and 40s," he says.

He adds that Wheaties introduces new athletes on its packaging with point-of-purchase displays, including elements like aisle-end signs. He said such limited-edition packages have a several-month availability.

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