Pop-Tarts is a breakfast icon. But to grow the brand and reach a new audience, we needed to break into a new occasion—moving from breakfast to snack.

So, we turned to the kingdom of snacks—college football—and looked to leverage our first-ever bowl sponsorship. Unfortunately, 2023 was not the ideal year to sponsor a bowl game. With 42 other bowl games, and with the advent of the college football playoffs, most had become more meaningless than ever. With viewership down, players opting out, what used to be fun—brands sponsoring bowls—had become tired.

To break through, we had to overcome the fact that the game didn’t seem to matter to most young fans. Our sponsorship had to become more interesting than the action on the field.

We created the world's first edible mascot, a giant Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts pastry, and fed it to the winning team on the field—as a snack. While most brands turn their food into a mascot, for the first time ever, we turned a mascot into food. And fed it to the winning team.

From the moment we announced the edible mascot, fans and media were captivated, anticipating what would happen at the game and discussing it endlessly—conversations we happily stoked (reaching our impressions goal weeks before gameday). This anticipation continued as our mascot cheered on both teams during the game, becoming the storyline on broadcast tv and throughout social media. The legend only grew after the mascot finally sacrificed itself to the winning team through a giant, on-field toaster. Fans at the game and at home watched the winning team devour the edible mascot.

We drove 15x the media mentions of any other brand-sponsored bowl, the highest search for the brand since 2008, and generated an estimated $12.1 million in brand value in the week after the game alone from TV, radio, social media, and digital news exposure.

We created a moment college football had never seen before. Rest in pastry, Strawberry.