Mobile Magic: The Saatchi and Saatchi Guide to Mobile Marketing and Design

Chapter 17.1: Marketing: Lucky Charms’ Chase for the Charms Mobile App

Based on an interview with Greg Pearson, Marketing Manager Lucky Charms and Julie Anderla Senior Manager, Integrated Marketing Communications

We looked at business opportunities and saw that almost half of Lucky Charms consumption comes from adults. So we thought, “How can we reach those adults in a different way than we do traditionally?” We’ve tried TV in the past, and have gotten mixed results, but with the universe of adults moving to new platforms we saw an opportunity to reach them. So the thought was to tap into the core of the Lucky Charms brand, and what that brand has been for 50 years, which is about a campaign that has kids chasing after the leprechaun, Lucky, to capture his magically delicious charms. So we wanted to create something that gave those adults the ability to experience the chase, but in a way that felt very experiential, using the technology and platforms where they were spending their time.

Once we were all on the same page, we started figuring out what would be the best way to let adults experience the chase. We probably went through four, five, six iterations of ideas of how to do this. Some were live-event based, others were more mobile-based, and some were social-based. We realized that the idea of a chase has a gaming component to it: Making a game lets you reward people for specific ...