Kellogg's plans to sweeten its' brand offering with a touch of salt in 2012. Their newest property is the recently purchased Pringles flagship, and the buy represents Kellogg's effort to chip away at the growing international snacks market.

But what's a cereal monogamist like Kellogg's doing in the international snacks market anyway? Well, it turns out cereal isn't filling the sales bowl like it once did. The category flat-lined for Kellogg's three years ago due to a proliferation of generic taste-alike brands and consumer boredom with cereal as the convenience food that no longer seemed so convenient. Packaged snacks became the new banner food for convenience (no bowl, no milk), and business is booming, especially internationally.

Brand Keys has researched both categories extensively in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index and found that what drives brand engagement and loyalty for snack food differs significantly from breakfast cereal breakfast. For snacks, the most important contributors are brand trust and appeal for the whole family. In the cereal category, however, it's all about the brands that help you maintain your lifestyle (like weight management).

Kellogg's approach in this category has given them many strong entries, with rankings looking like this:

  1. General Mills Cheerios
  2. Kellogg's Special K
  3. General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios
  4. Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats
  5. Post Honey Bunches of Oats
  6. General Mills Fiber One
  7. Kellogg's Rice Krispies
  8. Kellogg's Raisin Bran
  9. Kellogg's Corn Flakes
  10. Quaker Life
  11. Post Grape-Nuts
  12. Post Raisin Bran
  13. General Mills Kix

It's said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but now if brands want to feed the bottom line, snacks appear the way to go.

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