Our passion for brand building began more than 100 years ago with the creation of the Kellogg’s trademark, which has become one of the world’s most beloved brands.

Our strong brands are a competitive advantage for Kellogg.

Because they are instantly recognizable to consumers around the world, our brands provide a solid platform for our marketing activities and enable us to efficiently introduce new products and ideas into our categories. We ensure our brands remain strong by making substantial investments in brand building. In fact, we have repeatedly increased our advertising investment since 2000, investing more than $1 billion each year in 2007 and 2008. We advertise across a broad range of media, and we capitalize on our global scale to execute consumer promotions across our categories and businesses. Over the years, we have forged promotional agreements related to blockbuster movies, such as the Indiana Jones series, as well as pop-culture trends, like Guitar Hero games. Our ability to modify ideas that work in one geography or business unit to be successful in others is a key edge for Kellogg.

Our major categories are highly responsive to strong advertising, and we continue to fund value-added promotional activities despite the current economic environment. In 2008, we explored new ways to increase our return on investment and drive efficiency. We continued to strengthen our marketing organization by implementing best practices on a global basis. This revealed opportunities for efficiency, including the potential to leverage commonalities among our brands to increase message consistency and effectiveness while reducing costs.

We are also aggressively exploring digital avenues of reaching consumers, which offer better targeting, engagement and dialog capabilities than many other media channels. The digital environment provides a fresh, cost-effective way to commercialize new and existing brands. Over the past 18 months, our online media program for our Special K brand has generated strong results, and marketing initiatives that integrate consumers’ online experiences with television and print exposure, such as the Pop-Tarts Hide and Seek program, have generated record-breaking site visits and consumer engagement. We are now applying this strategy to our other brands where appropriate and will leverage these globally as well.