Cereal offense: The marketing ploy behind kids’ breakfast

Whether or not your child goes cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs has a lot to do with the penetrating gaze of the cartoon character on the cereal box, according to a new study.

Researchers from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab found that the cartoon characters featured on cereal boxes marketed to children tend to gaze downward at about a 10-degree angle, but the spokes-characters on adult cereals tend to look straight ahead.

That means the cartoon image on the cereal box is likely looking down to make eye contact with younger children scampering by in the cereal aisle, while the same applies to their parents with with the straight-ahead gaze of the athlete on the Wheaties box.

That eye contact, the researchers say, is a way of attracting the child’s interest — and the parent’s wallet.

“If you have eye contact with something, even if it’s somebody on a box, it looks more trustworthy, and it increases your likelihood to purchase things,” said Brian Wansink, a marketing professor at Cornell and director of the Food and Brand Lab, in a video release about the study.

In the study of 65 cereal brands and the gazes of 86 spokes-characters at 10 grocery stores in New York and Connecticut, the placement of cereals corresponded with the height of the intended consumer. Children’s cereals were placed on the bottom two shelves, at an average height of 23 inches.

Cereals marketed to adults, meanwhile, were placed on the top two shelves, at an average height of 48 inches, according to the study — "Why is Cap'n Crunch Looking Down at My Child?" — published Wednesday in the Journal of Environment and Behavior. 

In a second study, the same researchers asked 63 university students to look at two versions of a box of Trix cereal — one with the rabbit making straight-ahead eye contact, and another featuring the rabbit looking down — and rate their “feelings of trust and connection to the brand.”

The students who looked at the Trix box with the rabbit making direct eye contact reported 16 percent more in brand trust and 10 percent more feelings of connection to the brand compared with the students whose cartoon rabbit didn’t look right at them.

And the first group of students also reported liking Trix better than other cereals when the rabbit made eye contact.

The findings come amid concern over the impact of sugary products on rising childhood obesity rates in the U.S.

Wansink suggests the best tactic for parents is to avoid taking their child to the cereal aisle altogether. Alternatively, he said, cereal brands could use the same methods to make healthier cereals more compelling to children. “Put Scooby-Doo on a healthy cereal and have Scooby look right at them,” he said.