Working alongside Jabulani Sibiya on the Weet-Bix Flavourites campaign at M&C Saatchi Abel, we didn't set out to sell cereal. We set out to weaponise FOMO.
Our one-line brief said it all: "Create ridiculous levels of FOMO for those who don't have a Weet-Bix Flavourite."
The real opportunity wasn't in selling a breakfast product. It was in transforming flavoured Weet-Bix into a cultural conversation piece. We weren't just launching new flavours; we were making your Kellogg's feel socially uncomfortable.
Weet-Bix Flavourites: "Banana" - Directed by Lazola Gola
While competitors were busy making the category as boring as watching paint dry (high fibre! essential nutrients!), we recognised something fundamental about breakfast: it isn't just fuel; it's the first choice you make about yourself every day, the first statement about who you are.
We positioned having a "Flavourite" as the new "What's your star sign?" – equally meaningless, yet somehow deeply revealing. Not having a favorite became suspicious, like claiming you're "still waiting to see if this whole internet thing catches on."
The insight driving our approach? In a world of accidental economists, the real currency isn't money. It's being in-the-know. And FOMO is our ATM.
Rather than manufacturing cereal evangelists from scratch, we mapped where Flavourite debates were already happening on social media and poured fuel on those fires. We didn't try to create new breakfast behaviors; we hijacked existing ones.
We turned it into South Africans' "I was there when" moment. Where not having a Flavourite became like admitting you still use Internet Explorer – not just dated, but sus. Where claiming you "just haven't gotten around to trying it yet" became the breakfast equivalent of social suicide.
Was it psychological warfare? Absolutely. But we made it cereal.