Tow #20 General Foods' Post Toasties Ad

Breakfast serves as one of the most important meals of the day for families in America. Ready-to-eat cereal specifically ranks as one of the most popular choices for a nutritious breakfast. In this advertisement, General Foods avidly promotes their breakfast product Post-Toasties cereal as a superior cereal to other competing brands that everyone can enjoy. Through the use of symbolism and comparisons, General Foods effectively persuades consumers to buy Post-Toasties.

General Foods specifically aims to advertise Post-Toasties as a cereal that everyone in the family can enjoy, not just children to encourage adults even more to buy their product. Through symbolism, the picture in the middle represents the typical family of two parents and two children happily eating Post-Toasties cereal together in their backyard. The father holds up a spoonful of Post-Toasties cereal as the mother rings a triangles to call their children to come eat a Post-Toasties breakfast. Each of the family members has a speech bubble above their heads raving about the cereal such as “There’s a striking DIFFERENCE in corn flakes!” or “Post Toasties tops ‘em all...so fresh.... so crisp... so gland!”. One of the children exclaims that because the Post-Tens package offers 7 different types of Post-Toasties cereal, “everyone in the family can each have their particular favorite as often as they please” The image uses the bandwagon appeal by symbolizing what the “normal” American family eats for breakfast and implies that the consumer should be like the family in the picture and buy Post-Toasties cereal for their family.

To further distinguish their brand of cereal from any other brand, General Foods emphasizes that there’s actually “a real difference” in their cornflakes compared to other companies. The ad states that according to nation-wide tests, more and more people prefer their Post-Toasties corn flakes to any other corn flakes. What makes their product different, the company reiterates is their “post-toasting”, a process that easily separates them from the rest of the competing cereals. At the bottom of the ad, they even coin the phrase “Don’t say “Corn Flakes”- Say POST TOASTIES- the BETTER Corn Flakes!”

General Goods effectively advertises their Post Toasties cereal by using the bandwagon appeal to convince american families that all families eat their cereal and compares their cereal to other competing brands.