Will Keith Kellogg always looked at the business opportunity in every project he worked on. At the age of 14, he was the youngest travelling salesman at his father’s broom factory. When he began working with his brother John at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, they looked at ways to make healthy breakfast meals and through a bit of luck (accidental flaking), they pioneered the process of making flaked cereal. While Will wanted to sell the corn flakes, John wanted to only make it available to patients and members of the Sanitarium and much to Will’s disapproval, he showed everyone how cornflakes were made.

Will opened the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company (later called Kellogg Company) in 1906 but by that stage, many people had seen how they made their cereal and there were 42 cereal companies in the Battle Creek area alone. As he could not rely on being the “first”, he had to decide how to be the best. Will advertised around the fact that while there were many copies, his cereal was actually “the original” and he signed his name on all boxes and told people that his signature marked the “original” and to be aware of imitations. That was the start of his advertising campaign. He knew people would buy the cornflakes if they tried it so began to give away samples and followed that up with advertisements in magazines and billboards, including the world’s largest advertising sign at the time. He paid attention to what the customers wanted and looked at ways to improve how cornflakes were packaged and stored. He created the waxtite wrappers, a new concept in packaging technology and put nutrition information on the boxes. He also made individual boxes for hospitals and hotels in order to provide single servings. Kellogg’s were the first company to include a toy for children inside the boxes. Kellogg’s advertising was interactive and included sending tokens from boxes in for a prize, art competitions and the best were used for some ads and they even asked customers to pick mascots, one of the most popular being Tony for Frosted Flakes. At a time when cereal weren’t actually “original” due to copies, Kellogg’s dominated the market they created domestically and internationally through advertising #kellogg’s #cereal #entrepreneur #success #fridayfeeling