Tony the Tiger, all aglow in synthetic orange fur, rushes up with an outstretched paw as you approach the door. Toucan Sam marks the hour by popping out of a glockenspiel near the entrance and squawking “Froot Loops, Froot Loops.” Inside the building, boxes of corn flakes pass by on an overhead conveyor belt and the simulated smell of toasting corn flakes works its way into your consciousness.
Welcome to Kellogg’s Cereal City USA, Southwest Michigan’s latest attraction and one that may have enough grit to put Battle Creek on the tourism map. A cross between a factory tour and a theme park, Cereal City, which opened on June 1, offers a prime example of a new sort of entertainment hybrid popping up on the cultural landscape — one that’s partially indebted to Disney and Busch Gardens, Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, not to mention countless children’s science centers and corporate museums.
The real prototypes for this brand of family entertainment, however, are Hershey’s Chocolate World in Pennsylvania, which evolved from a factory tour to a full-fledged amusement park, the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta and the Crayola Factory in Easton, Pa. None of these attractions offers actual factory tours, but each draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year–which isn’t that surprising in a society where people are all too happy to wear logo-laden apparel that provides endless free advertising for designers and brands.
“Large corporations are discovering a lot of inherent equity in their brand that goes beyond the core business of selling cars or selling Coke,” says Jack Rouse, whose eponymous Cincinnati-based company designed Cereal City and is working on a similar project for Volkswagen in Germany. “Consequently, the visitor attraction. It parallels the trend of museums merging with entertainment.”
Factory tours are increasingly appealing to a society that’s further removed than ever from the producer process. People who sit behind a terminal all day generally have no idea how Cocoa Krispies make their way from a rice paddy to their breakfast table. The booming stock market has also stimulated people’s interest in public companies and corporate history, says Bruce Brumberg, who co-wrote “Watch it Made in the U.S.A.” (John Muir Publications, $17.95) with his wife, Karen Axelrod.
“They capture an important part of American history and its future,” Brumberg said of corporate museums and attractions.
Ironically, the phonemenon is occurring at a time when many companies have discontinued tours for reasons ranging from liability issues to corporate espionage. Kellogg’s, which ran tours until 1986, used to escort as many as 200,000 visitors a year through its Battle Creek factory, and the local convention and visitors bureau still receives five to 10 inquiries from tourists curious about the plant’s innards.
This abiding interest in tours, along with Battle Creek’s breakfast food-based history (early in the century, it was home to more than 100 cereal companies), prompted local organizations to figure out how to celebrate cereal in a way that would draw travelers to this city of 55,000 located 175 miles from Chicago. Kellogg’s agreed to lend its name to the non-profit venture, located just across the river from the cereal giant’s headquarters, and in the shadow of the Sanitarium, the health center where the two Kellogg brothers and J.H. Kellogg’s wife invented corn flakes.
Cereal City hopes to attract 400,000 visitors in its first year, says Willie Calloway, a former Six Flags executive who is now director of Cereal City. That number would exceed the 300,000 visitors drawn by Crayola but lag behind the 970,000 who pay homage to Coca-Cola in Atlanta each year.
For Rouse, the challenge was to create an attraction that was “an emotional replacement for the factory tour, not a re-creation.” Millions of people who took the original tour fondly remember the free box of cereal they received at the end, along with the complimentary Froot Loops sundae. Now, after walking through a self-guided, simulated tour at Cereal City (the real tour was free; at Cereal City admission costs $6.50 for adults), visitors can spend $14.95 to have their photo placed on a box of Corn Flakes and order a frozen yogurt sundae topped with Froot Loops for $1.49 in the downstairs food court.
Before exiting, they’re corralled into a 5,000-square-foot retail store selling everything from golf balls to denim jackets emblazoned with the likes of Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam and Cornelius, the rooster who appears on boxes of Corn Flakes.
The process of making corn flakes can be hard to follow. But the history of Battle Creek’s “Cereal Gold Rush” at the turn of the century; tales of the rivalry between the two Kellogg brothers and their corporate rivalry with C.W. Post; the cereal trivia (where else can you learn what makes Rice Krispies do snap, crackle and pop?); old TV ads starring Drew Barrymore and other celebrities; and interactive areas for children more than round out the experience.
“I think that nothing beats a real factory tour, but these are a nice second, especially if people want information on a company’s history and manufacturing,” said Brumberg.
For the company sponsoring a corporate attraction, the pay-off isn’t the least bit artificial.
One of the people who vividly remembers visiting Kellogg’s as a kid is Chicagoan Marc Schulman, president of Eli’s Cheesecake Co. Eli’s opened a visitors’ center and began offering factory tours at its Northwest Side plant in the fall of 1996 and now ushers 500 people a week through the cheesecake-making process. The Kellogg’s tour is “one of the things that inspired us,” says Schulman. “If you win someone over and if that person buys into what you’re saying, you’ve created a real strong advocate for your brand.”
In the world of branding, advocacy is the third and most desirable stage of brand power, explains Kay Stout, chief marketing and creative strategist for Landor Associates, a global branding consulting company.
“If your customers are your sales force, how valuable is that?” says Stout. “This is a very exciting time for brands because they’re exploring new territory beyond product innovation. It’s really about an experience, which is a different level.”
For visitors, the experience offers a different kind of tourist attraction, one that’s educational, affordable and just a bit offbeat.
These new attractions are competing not only with children’s museums but with theme parks for a family’s leisure time, said Rouse. And the ultimate key to the success of corporate attractions may be their bite-sized appeal. “There’s a real need out there for more manageable entertainment/educational moments for the family that only take two or three hours,” he said. “Going to a theme park is a major commitment both in time and dollars. When you’ve only paid $6.50 (a person) to get in, if you leave after two and a half hours, that’s OK. That’s what a movie costs.”
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Kellogg’s Cereal City USA, 171 W. Michigan Ave., Battle Creek, Mich., is open daily. Admission is $6.50 for adults and $4.50 for children. For information, call (616) 962-6230.
