BATTLE CREEK, MI: Kellogg Company, in the midst of staff cuts and a corporate restructuring that will spell savings of dollars 30 to dollars 40 million starting in 2001, has unveiled plans to significantly boost marketing spending.
BATTLE CREEK, MI: Kellogg Company, in the midst of staff cuts and a corporate restructuring that will spell savings of dollars 30 to dollars 40 million starting in 2001, has unveiled plans to significantly boost marketing spending.
The boost will especially affect its key markets: the US, Ireland, the UK, Canada, Mexico and Australia.
Increased marketing spending is expected to deliver a sizeable bounty, which will be devoted to both advertising and PR, said Richard Lovell, financial communications director for Kellogg's. Roughly dollars 4 billion of the company's dollars 7 billion in annual sales comes from the US market, so the bulk of new spending will occur there, Lovell said.
Meghan Parkhurst, senior manager of marketing communications for Kellogg USA, concurred. 'We are committed to brand building,' she said.
Kellogg's US arm has an internal marketing communications department and works primarily with Fleishman-Hillard and Porter Novelli. Parkhurst wouldn't say whether the cereal maker will seek additional outside PR help.
The strategy reverses a trend in which Kellogg's cut marketing expenditures only to see sales slide. General Mills, maker of Cheerios and Wheaties, topped Kellogg's in the cereal business about two years ago.
Kellogg's' ad agencies Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson are expected to see the biggest gains in ad spending from the company's plans to step up marketing efforts.
