While Michigan and Washington will compete for college football’s national championship on Monday, the undisputed brand winner of bowl season is Pop-Tarts and parent company Kellanova, which proved that absurdist humor resonates with more than just Gen Z viewers.

People are still buzzing about the brand’s stunt at last week’s Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, when at the end of the North Carolina State-Kansas State game fans were captivated by the smiley Pop-Tarts mascot, who was lowered into a giant toaster holding a sign that said “Dreams really do come true.” A giant, edible version of the mascot then appeared, and members of the winning Kansas State team pulled off pieces to eat.

Also read: Kellanova CMO on the Pop-Tarts mascot marketing win

Fans loved it. They created memes and added music to videos of the mascot being lowered into the toaster. The goofiness of the mascot, and the sort of sacrifice-turned-cannibalism, struck many as funny.

Perhaps most importantly for Kellanova, the stunt gained attention beyond the core collegiate football viewing audience. The Pop-Tarts bowl game generated an estimated $12.1 million worth of media exposure for Kellanova as of Dec. 29, according to Apex Marketing Group. (The bowl game sponsorship has cost around $2 million in the past, as reported by Sportico's Eben Novoy Williams.)  Kellanova chief marketing officer Julie Bowerman previously told Ad Age that the goal of the sponsorship was to get consumers to consider the toaster pastries as a snack option, not just for breakfast. 

But it achieved much more than that in the end—gaining the kind of virality brands crave. As one expert pointed out, while the stunt drew attention on social media, it began in real life, setting it apart from so much marketing these days which is contained to social media. Weber Shandwick was credited as the lead creative shop for the bowl game.

Also read: 80 ad execs make predictions for 2024

“We are used to seeing brands have a more edgy, or risk-taking personality on social media,” said Ryan McConnell, executive VP of Sports Monitor at Kantar. “But now, millennials and Gen Z have both grown up in the age of the internet, so they are used to reading and watching brands act a certain way on social media, and now that is migrating into the real world.”

Indeed, a Kantar survey of 2,000 Gen Zers from May 2023 found that 50% of them identified as having a “goofy or silly” sense of humor with another 36% identifying as “random.”

Several brands are known for leaning into weird humor on social media. Wendy’s has long tapped into this with its annual roast day, where customers and brands can volunteer to be insulted by Wendy’s. Scrub Daddy and Duolingo are known on TikTok for what some describe as “unhinged” content. The two brands once even teamed up to make a video showing the Duo owl giving birth to a couple of sponge owls. Fast food giant McDonald’s embraced Gen Z’s humor with the Grimace Shake TikTok trend.

But the Pop-Tarts bowl stood out for taking a lighthearted approach in sports marketing, where fans are often fed more traditional sponsorship activations, McConnell suggested.

“It was fun! And I think that can get a bit overshadowed in sports today,” he said. “Usually when brands put a lot of money into these rights deals, it can feel like they try very hard to control the output.”

For Harry Poole, VP of brand marketing at Excel Sports Management, a management and sports marketing agency, the Pop-Tarts mascot was reminiscent of the Left Shark from Katy Perry’s 2015 Super Bowl performance. The dancer seemed to be flailing out of sync with the music. Fans loved the performer’s perceived botched performance or clumsiness.

“There was something irreverent about that Left Shark,” Poole said. “Watching the Pop-Tarts mascot, there was a similar unscripted nature that felt really natural.”

But Pop-Tart’s success will be hard to top, both for Kellanova and other brands, Poole said. “I think this was so good, you have to let it die in a sense,” he said. “You can have too much of a good thing.”

Kantar’s McConnell disagreed. “It’s so hard to break through in the sports environment. So when you do capture attentions like that, I think it makes sense to push on it for a few days.”

Kellanova executives were not available for interviews on Tuesday. 

Bizarre bowl games?

Marketing experts agreed that Pop-Tarts’ success will probably have brands going back to the drawing board when it comes to bowl games.

“You need to be comfortable with taking calculated risks,” Poole said. “This was not super, super safe, but the reward has far outweighed the risk. I would say that for brands who want to do something similar— whatever ideas you would usually immediately kill during a pitch, the wild, or hard-to-pull-off ideas, those are probably the ones you should examine more closely.”

But the drive to have the same stellar reaction could lead to a sort of “arms race,” according to McConnell. “Brands will have to find a way to push the envelope, but remain original,” he said. “But that can be challenging. Fans pick up on over-commercialization in sports, and eventually someone will cross the line.”

A win for Cheez-It

Kellanova also sponsored Monday’s Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, which had a sunglasses-wearing Cheez-It mascot rise out of a giant box of the crackers. But this one held a sign saying, “Non-edible mascot.”

Many fans thought this was a reaction to the Pop-Tart mascot.

The Cheez-It mascot also won over viewers when it stayed behind the Tennesee Volunteers’ coach, sliding him a box of Cheez-Its mid-post-game interview.

For Poole, the Cheez-It bowl was still successful, but not to the same level as Pop-Tarts. “The fact that their match-up was a blowout probably didn’t help,” he said, referring to the Tennessee Volunteers trouncing the Iowa Hawkeyes 35-0. “But still, people were talking about them during both games.”