Dive Brief:

• Eggo is running a multichannel campaign that highlights its L'Eggometer, a social listening tool to measure the stress that parents feel in the morning as they help their kids get ready for school. The campaign for the Kellogg-owned brand of frozen waffles includes paid social, online video, publicity and shopper promotions, per an announcement.
• The L'Eggometer campaign includes personalized videos from celebrities including Melissa Joan Hart, Shawn Johnson East and Mark Ingram II, who also are parents. Eggo also create a landing page with content from fellow parents, advice on diffusing tension and a chance to win free waffles as part of its 1 million waffle giveaway for 2021.
• Eggo each Wednesday will post a L'Eggometer reading on social media to highlight parental stress levels. After studying conversations on social media, the L'Eggometer found that the morning after daylight saving time starts is "one of the highest-pressure mornings for parents, who are dealing with cranky, sleep-deprived kids," the announcement said, and the brand will give away 100,000 when daylight saving time begins on March 14.

Dive Insight:

Eggo's rollout of the L'Eggometer, whose name is derived from the waffle brand's "L'Eggo my Eggo" slogan, is a humorous way to engage parents on social media as they share stories about their travails at breakfast time. The launch is timed to the beginning of daylight saving time, claiming that its social listening tool has found that parents experience higher stress levels in the mornings after clocks are set forward an hour.

The L'Eggometer rollout is a continuation of Eggo's campaign that started in January with the same celebrity spokespeople. At that time, the brand added a new tagline, "L'Eggo with Eggo," to its "L'Eggo my Eggo" slogan to de-emphasize conflict during hectic mornings. Eggo also announced plans to give away 1 million waffles and urged parents to share their stories of "messy mornings" on social media, using the #helpmeleggo hashtag, according to a separate announcement.

Kellogg this year aims to maintain sales growth after seeing strong gains during the pandemic as homebound consumers prepared more meals at home. During a quarterly earnings call in February, management said Kellogg would keep its marketing spending steady as sales remained stable. The company forecast that organic sales, which don't include acquisitions, divestitures or currency moves, would decline about 1% this year, indicating consumer demand for packaged foods wouldn't go back to pre-pandemic levels.

Still, there are signs that some consumers are resuming their former shopping habits after a surge of panic-buying and pantry-stocking a year ago. Kellogg's organic sales rose 2.5% from a year earlier to $3.3 billion in the fourth quarter, marking a slowdown from the 4.5% and 9.2% gains in third and second quarters, respectively, per its earnings reports.

Kellogg's support for its brands has been evident with a variety of campaigns aimed at homebound consumers. Its cereal brand Frosted Mini-Wheats in October gave families a chance to win a board game inspired by the morning rush. Before that, the company offered a chance to win the "Special K Blursday Go-Away Kit," which featured a cereal flavor for each day of the week. The L'Eggometer rollout indicates Kellogg continues to seek ways to engage consumers on social media.