Cinnamon Toast Crunch today launched its latest campaign, “Must Cinnadust,” per details shared with Marketing Dive. The effort finds the General Mills cereal brand taking the creative concept of its early 2000s ads in a killer new direction to reengage Gen Z consumers.

While Cinnamon Toast Crunch ads from the beginning of the century featured anthropomorphized cereal eating each other, “Must Cinnadust” takes the cannibalistic squares to a new level, envisioning the cereal through the prism of serial killers and true crime.

The 30-second “Fridge” ad imagines a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch as an apartment building occupied by a deranged cereal square with a fridge full of cereal “body parts” who shares his predicament in voice over, while the 30-second “Alley” follows the square as it stalks and devours another piece of cereal in an alley. Six-second spots feature a spoon stabbing and the unrolling of plastic wrap, a la “American Psycho” or “Dexter” — dark ideas for a cereal brand to embrace.

“They were really surprisingly brave,” said Katie Samuelsen, an associate creative director at The Martin Agency who worked on the campaign, of the brand team. “From the beginning, they felt the shock factor. They were like, 'Whoa, this is pretty crazy, and that's why we have to do it.’” 

The campaign came as Cinnamon Toast Crunch looked to evolve its brand for Gen Z, which grew up on the cereal but was aging out of how it was showing up. Rather than reinventing the brand, the team looked to update past ads with a touch of the dark humor and true crime that the cohort prefers.

“These are people who still love the brand and have deep nostalgic ties to it, but they’re now older teens. They’re looking for stories and humor that match where they are in life — smarter, more layered and a little more self-aware,” said Brandon Tyrrell, senior marketing communications manager at General Mills, in emailed comments.

Creating and extending a world

Other brands have utilized nostalgia for old ad campaigns and characters, although not all such efforts have been successful. Pop-Tarts in 2023 modernized its “Crazy Good” characters from a similar period with an effort that culminated in a similarly bizarre approach to consumption. In addition, Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s focus on “cinnadust” is reminiscent of how Cheetos has made the signature orange dust, or “cheetle,” of its product central to marketing efforts in recent years.

The creative adds a new dimension to the 2D cereal square characters, literally, through stop-motion animation and clever, easter egg-filled design (including cookbooks titled “Killer Recipes” and “Breakfast to Die For”). Capturing the stop-motion animation required about a month of pre-production and a 10-day shoot with several animators.

“It was really awesome to create this world, and cool to do it in stop motion where everything was real and practical,” Samuelsen said.

Media will run on social, linear TV and premium online video in six-, 15- and 30-second cuts, along with bespoke six-second social vignettes that feel native to social platforms. The campaign will then layer on a influencer and PR component to drive deeper engagement.

“Our media strategy was built around how our audience consumes content today — fragmented, fast-moving and deeply social,” Tyrrell said. “The campaign isn’t meant to live in one place. It’s designed to feel episodic and immersive, almost like you’re uncovering the mystery piece by piece, no matter where you come across it.”