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When the 2024 Pop-Tarts Bowl concluded, a mascot dressed as the tasty snack descended into an 11-foot-tall toaster, accompanied by fireworks and loud cheers for the winning college football team.
What emerged was a life-size edible Pop-Tart, serving as a championship treat, eaten by the victorious Iowa State Cyclones.
But the team isn’t the only one who has gobbled up Pop-Tarts. Thanks to sponsorship, the game has become a viral sensation. The mascots, the tie-ins, the fun. It has decimated college football — and will likely happen again for this year’s contest on Dec. 27.
Leslie Cerro, vice president of marketing for Pop-Tarts, reported that “millions” more Pop-Tarts were sold in the month following the December 2024 game than in the month before. Sports Business Journal.
The appetite for the Pop-Tarts Bowl has been “well, crazy” since the first bowl game in 2023. Experts say this can partly be chalked up to the theatrics of Pop-Tarts bowls: its googly-eyed mascot, giant toaster, and fully functional toaster baked into the trophy.
“What Pop-Tarts did was obviously brilliant,” said sports marketing veteran Bob Dorfman. Independent. The brand took the traditions of bowl games — the mascots, the trophy, the post-game awards ceremony — and “really turned it upside down and made them a lot more fun, a lot more interesting,” Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing veteran, explained. Independent.
Dorfman said, “The brand took the fun side of football and elevated it almost to the point of madness, and they did that – and they did it without ruining the heart of football.”
After the first Pop-Tarts Bowl in 2023, when the brand introduced its so-called “edible mascot”, a marketing campaign for many of the ones won advertising awardsThe human-sized strawberry mascot – with a cartoon face painted on colorful frosting – was “sacrificed” into the giant toaster, which spit out a four-foot-tall Pop-Tart for the winners to eat,
Even after the breakfast treat was sacrificed, social media revived the deliciously beloved character through viral memes. The brand also played a role in the 2024 bowl game Reviving Strawberry Pop-Tarts In human form. It appeared half-eaten, with strawberry insides visible in place of its white layer, splinters at a slant and only one eye hanging on for dear life.
In the second-ever Pop-Tarts Bowl, three new flavors were introduced, including the famous Sacrifice Frosted Cinnamon Roll. The new flavors led to memes surfacing online – including the moments when mascots dramatically mimicked them rapperThis year, the gimmick continues: There will be six, The six flavors are divided between two teams, and for the first time, fans will get vote It’s up to which team – Team Sprinkles or Team Swirls – will be eaten by this year’s bowl game champion.
This fan contest “could drive even more buzz on social media,” Dorfman predicted.
Social media channels have become extremely popular. Last year on Game Day, Pop-Tarts saw the “highest brand searches in more than 15 years,” Cerro said.
Now, official Pop-Tarts Bowl social media accounting book It has thousands of followers, while the brand’s official pages are even more popular, with 299,000 followers on TikTok and 374,000 on Instagram.
The brand is 61 years old, but through the presence of the mascots in social media and commercials, “they keep themselves relevant not only around the actual game date, but throughout the year,” said Eric Smallwood, president of Apex Marketing Group.
He thought it was the “uniqueness of the activation” that made the brand’s marketing so successful, pointing out the toaster’s effectiveness on a large scale by “showing how to use their product on the field” and then having the winning team eat it.
“It’s scholarly in some respects, but it’s marketing,” Smallwood said.
Not one to shy away from the shtick, last year, organizers introduced a trophy that was equipped with a fully functional toasterThe Pop-Tart-pushing prize will also be featured this year, Earlier this month, the coaches of Brigham Young University and Georgia Tech, teams competing in this year’s bowl game, each Put a Pop-Tart in a Trophy Toaster Two slots and then a bite of the warm pastry.
“Our fans have made it clear: Pop-Tarts Bowl isn’t just another game, it’s an experience,” Pop-Tarts Bowl CEO Steve Hogan said in a press release last December.
The bowl game’s neat name may also have contributed to its marketing win. The Cheez-It Citrus Bowl — Cheez-It, like Pop-Tarts, is owned by Kelanova — has a “mixed message” while the Pop-Tarts Bowl has a straightforward name, Smallwood said.
“Some people will call it Cheez-It Citrus Bowl and some will call it Citrus Bowl. So there will be a mixed message where Pop-Tarts Bowl is Pop-Tarts Bowl. There’s no other word thrown into the mix. That also plays into the value piece because of verbal mentions and how the media interprets it,” he said.
It appears that a combination of factors are at work. Apex Marketing Group found that in 2023, Pop-Tarts generated approximately $12.1 million in brand value from media exposure. That figure more than doubled last year to $26.1 million in the week surrounding the 2024 games.
Last year, 6.8 million viewers tuned in to watch the Pop-Tarts Bowl, making it the most-watched edition of the bowl game held at an Orlando, Florida stadium since 2008 under various names. espnHow many of those viewers were true football fans versus Pop-Tart lovers is unclear,
According to Dorfman, the bowl game’s popularity stems from “people thinking outside the Pop-Tarts box and coming up with cool ideas that don’t take away from the game, but make it more interesting and watchable and viral.”
The Cougars and Yellow Jackets are scheduled to tip off on Dec. 27 at 3:30 ET — but so will Team Sprinkles and Team Swirls.