Kids pull the strings with Kellogg’s

Mini-Wheats Canada inspired brand love with this neat speed dating event where they let kids pull the strings by talking to a dater via microphone and asking her to do weird and wonderful things. From smearing lipstick on her date to putting pretzels up her nose, the tasks drastically veered away from traditional dating etiquette.

The three children control the action from a screened area in another room, even dictating snippets of her conversation, including getting her to inform her date, ‘you look like a princess’, and looking into their eyes and declaring, ‘wow, you can, like, see the universe in there’. 

This campaign wins me over because it helps us remember to take ourselves a little less seriously while still getting across the brand’s values. It also manages to appeal to children and parents all in one broad brush stroke – by targeting the kid-at-heart in us all. 

The kids cause all kinds of chaos in the restaurant from getting the incognito dater to pretend she had a dog called Sparkie, to making her bark like a dog and, as with traditional speed dating, every now and then, her date changes as she gets a new unsuspecting ‘victim’. 

Once all the fun is over, the kids come out from behind-the-scenes and reveal themselves to the surprise of an incredibly confused room. 

The Mini-Wheats ‘Feed your inner kidult’ campaign is going from strength to strength. Kellogg’s also orchestrated ‘Kids secretly control a fitness class’ where they got three children to control an exercise class from behind-the-scenes, getting bewildered gym-goers to stick out their tongues, walk like an elephant and even build a ‘boat’ and pretend to paddle. 

What I like about this campaign is the way it uses kids to inspire not just brand love, but a childlike appreciation of the world around us. 
 

This isn’t the first speed dating stunt that is up my street, and previously on this blog, I’ve spoken about this ‘speed dating with a stunt driver’ video which got my experiential engine revving. 

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