Kellogg’s Variety Pack: “settles all differences” campaign

Kellogg’s Variety Pack as peace-maker

We ended our previous post with a 1959 commercial showing how Kellogg’s Variety Pack could satisfy a consumer with differing Jekyll-and-Hyde cereal tastes. A year earlier, in 1958 Leo Burnett (Kellogg’s advertising agency) created this “settles all differences” campaign.

Here, they illustrate the ways in which Kellogg’s Variety Pack “settles all differences” — between people who are actually different people. Although 5 of the 7 people depicted are not technically people. (Including, as they do: bull, dragon, wolf, lion and lamb.)

But the real mystery here is: who did the loose and loopy, watercolor/ink illustrations?

6 Print Ads (with parable poems)

I found 6 print ads from the campaign. They published them all in Life Magazine, I believe.

“Brave Bull to Bullfighter / Why choose to fight? / Let’s choose from Variety / Every choice is right! (published: 4/28/58)

“Lion and Lamb / Long record of strife / Now Variety Pack / Keeps ’em friends for life” (05/19/58)

“Cops and Robbers / Now see eye to eye / Variety Pack / is the reason why.” (06/09/58)

“Big bad Wolf and Little Red / Weren’t friendly in the fable / But we’re quite sure they would’ve been…” (7/7/58)

“Ump and Batter / don’t blow a stack / Each decision is right / with Variety Pack” (7/28/58)

“St. George fought the dragon / but now he’s forgiven / with Variety Pack / they’re both really livin’!” (8/18/58)

The Leo Burnett agency also made at least one television commercial for this campaign, using the knight and dragon characters above.

From Leo Burnett has come an excellent commercial on Kellogg’s Variety Pack. Animation is great. Voice choice, superb. Amusement, sustained, Still, the sell is there. There’s the mean dragon and the pure-hearted knight and you’d hardly expect two such different fellows to get along when they meet, there’s the Variety Pack and that settles all differences. At the breakfast table, anyway. Our personal Emmy Award to Playhouse Pictures, Inc. and to the agency handling the product.

Beatrice Adams, Vice President, Gardner Advertising
Television Magazine / Data Book, 1960

I tried, of course, to find this commercial, but it doesn’t seem to be online anywhere.

Another thing I noticed about this campaign, was that the little boxes in Kellogg’s Variety Pack had a new “all over” logo repeat-pattern background. This turns out to have been part of Kellogg’s 1958 rebranding initiative.

Kellogg’s “Signature Packages”

We wrote our name all over our new packages so you’d be sure of getting the real thing…

–Kellogg Company, 1958

---

The Kellogg Company has changed its package for greater company identification. Each package will have the same background: continuous rows of the Kellogg signature. The various cereals will then feature different vignettes to set them apart from the others. For example, the corn flakes package will feature a large ear of corn against the uniform background.

CSA Super Markets, 1958

---

Kellogg Co.
Battle Creek, Mich., announces a new line of “family look” packages for its cereal products. According to the company, the new-styled packs were adopted after careful consumer research in package design and have a quality appearance. Each package features wider corner cards “color-keyed” to highlight the name of each cereal and has Kellogg signatures in the background.

Supermarket Merchandising, 1958

Note: the inset photo of the 1958 Rice Krispies package (above) is from Jerry Jankowski and Grant Kessler‘s book, Shelf Space.