The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2008
Kraft 'releases' Diamond Shreddies — the exact same cereal, rotated 45°
A fading cereal gets a 'new product launch' with zero product change: rotate the square 45° and sell it deadpan as Diamond Shreddies — 18% sales growth follows
Kraft Canada (Shreddies)
What it had to solve
Canadians knew and liked Shreddies (wheat squares since 1939) but had forgotten it — 68 years on shelf as 'the square cereal'. The brief: make people think about Shreddies again, with no change to the product
How it works
Shreddies, the wheat-square cereal Nabisco launched in 1939, was a Canadian staple nobody was choosing anymore. 'Everyone in Canada knows and likes Shreddies, but they've forgotten about them,' read the One Show brief. For 68 years the brand had been the same — Wheat Squares — and the category's personality they carried was literal: square. Sales slid as the brand aged, and Kraft's constraint was absolute: no product innovation, no recipe change.
At Ogilvy Toronto, intern Hunter Somerville held up a Shreddies during a brainstorm and joked, 'it isn't a square, it's a diamond.' Creative chief Nancy Vonk pushed the joke into a full, deadpan product launch. Kraft released 'Diamond Shreddies' — the same cereal rotated 45° — with new 'diamond' packaging, a Combo Pack offering both shapes, commercials built as fake focus groups where tasters insisted the diamond both looked and tasted better, outdoor billboards, and a website announcing cereal science had reached 'a whole new level of geometric superiority'.
Canadians argued in blogs, on YouTube and in the national press over whether the campaign was a hoax or a joke — which was the point. Per the agency case page, the campaign delivered 18% growth over the period, diamond boxes sold out at shelf, and the work collected a Clio Grand Clio, the Cassies Grand Prix and an One Show Bronze Pencil, plus Cannes Bronze. It later became a textbook case and a reference in Rory Sutherland's TED talk.
The reveal was never concealed: the joke's engine is that the absurd claim is true, so consumers were never really deceived — they were invited to laugh at advertising itself.
Why it lands
- It converted a hard constraint (the product cannot change) into the joke itself: because the claim was openly absurd, no consumer felt duped, and the entertainment carried the message
- The straight face held everywhere — pack, focus groups, website, hotline — so the national press argued about whether Kraft was serious, which produced the earned coverage that paid for the campaign
- Packaging as media: the relaunched box put the story at the shelf, where a cereal is actually chosen, and turned 10 seconds of confusion into a conversation
- The joke was shareable by construction: anyone could join it instantly by tilting their box, making every shopper a punchline-teller and the campaign a national inside joke
What it did
Limited-edition diamond boxes sold out in stores, national press and blogs debated whether the trick was a joke, and sales grew ~18% over the campaign period — plus a haul of Clio, Cassies and One Show awards
What you can take
When the product cannot change, change the frame: a straight-faced relaunch of the same thing can generate news, debate and shelf pull — perception is the medium, not the recipe
Since then
Post Cereals (which took over the brand from Kraft later in 2008) eventually returned the product to standard squares, while shoppers kept asking for Diamond Shreddies for years. The campaign outlived the packaging: it became a fixture of marketing education, cited in Rory Sutherland's TED talk and countless textbooks as proof that intangible brand value can be created without touching the product. Its trick — announce an innovation that is really a re-framing, and keep a straight face — still gets borrowed by brands whenever they need news without a real change.
Sources
- 'New' Diamond Shreddies — Integrated Branding, One Show 2008 Bronze Pencil
- New Diamond Shreddies — case study by Ivan Pols (Ogilvy Toronto art director)
- Diamond Shreddies, an unbelievable rebranding case study
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