Pop-Tarts and Weber Shandwick created the first-ever edible mascot at the 2023 Pop-Tarts Bowl, generating over 4 billion impressions and winning the Cannes
Pop-Tarts Made Its Mascot the Meal at the Pop-Tarts Bowl
Pop-Tarts launched the first-ever edible mascot at the inaugural Pop-Tarts Bowl on December 28, 2023, creating an experiential stunt in which a costumed, human-sized pastry character was ceremonially eaten by college football players live on national television in the United States, turning a brand sponsorship into the most-talked-about moment of the bowl season.
The campaign, titled The First Edible Mascot and developed by Weber Shandwick serving as both creative and public relations agency, was rooted in a sixty-year brand truth. Pop-Tarts has always positioned flavor as its defining obsession, embodied since 2004 through its long-running "Crazy Good" creative platform, as documented by PRWeek. That platform historically used absurdist humor and anthropomorphized pastry characters who, paradoxically, seemed willing to be consumed. The edible mascot took that logic to its theatrical extreme: if the mascot is a Pop-Tart, and Pop-Tarts exist to be eaten, then the mascot's highest purpose is to be devoured on the field.
Kellanova, the parent company behind Pop-Tarts, entered the Pop-Tarts Bowl not merely as a title sponsor but as a creative participant. The objective was to move the brand beyond its identity as a breakfast staple and place it at the center of a broader snacking conversation in the United States, reaching consumers across the full day. By centering the entire bowl experience on food and flavor — from pregame activations to the climactic on-field mascot consumption — the campaign transformed a conventional sports sponsorship into a fully immersive brand world. The winning team also performed a Pop-Tarts-themed version of the Gatorade-bath tradition, drenching their coach with Pop-Tarts rather than a cooler of sports drink. The result was a campaign that earned a Clapboard Score of 88 out of 100, reflecting its exceptional creative ambition, cultural cut-through, and measurable commercial impact.
Pop-Tarts faced a specific strategic challenge in the United States confectionery and snacks market. The brand was strongly associated with morning consumption, and Kellanova needed to expand its relevance across the full day to compete in an increasingly crowded snacking landscape. Competitors including Mars, which leads global confectionery with a market share of approximately 12.7% according to GlobalData, and Mondelēz International, whose portfolio spans snacking occasions from morning through evening, had already established broad daypart presence. Pop-Tarts required a cultural moment large enough to reframe consumer perception without relying on traditional advertising alone.
College football provided the strategic aperture. The sport commands enormous live viewership in the United States and generates an intensity of social conversation that few other media environments can match. Rather than presenting Pop-Tarts as a passive sponsor alongside countless other brands, Weber Shandwick positioned the brand as the author of the event's most memorable narrative. Burke Boggio-Hair, Creative Director at Weber Shandwick on the campaign, led a team that identified mascots as the ultimate symbol of team spirit and therefore the ideal vehicle for a brand built on the idea of sacrificing everything for flavor, as documented by Weber Shandwick's own published account of the work.
The strategic insight extended to audience behavior. When the initial announcement was made, Twitter users began predicting a coach-bath activation, according to Weber Shandwick's campaign documentation. Rather than avoiding that expectation, the team embraced it as a creative challenge and delivered it. The edible mascot concept was also framed internally as analogous to cutting nets in NCAA tournament basketball — a ritualized act of celebration that becomes iconic precisely because of its specificity. This level of strategic thinking transformed a sponsorship asset into a cultural ritual, one that the New York Times would later declare had made the Pop-Tarts Bowl the event that "won the internet."
The creative execution of The First Edible Mascot operated simultaneously as ambient installation, live experiential event, and earned media engine. The concept required engineering a physically wearable, food-safe, structurally coherent mascot costume constructed from edible materials that could survive the heat, movement, and spectacle of a live college football bowl game environment in the United States before being consumed by athletes on national television.
Burke Boggio-Hair, Creative Director at Weber Shandwick, guided the campaign's development from early brainstorm through live execution, as documented by Weber Shandwick and subsequently reported by LinkedIn profiles associated with the campaign team. The core idea — feeding a Pop-Tarts mascot to college football players live on national television — emerged in those early sessions and remained intact through production, a rare outcome in large-scale experiential work. The team conceptualized the end-of-game consumption as a deliberate ritual, comparable in emotional weight to cutting down the nets after an NCAA tournament victory, according to Weber Shandwick's published account. That framing gave the stunt narrative coherence: it was not merely a gimmick but a ceremony.
The campaign's media architecture was constructed around the assumption that the live moment would generate organic social amplification. The mascot was designed to be visually absurd, theatrically committed, and inherently shareable. Fans responded by producing memes, videos, GIFs, and social commentary at a scale that validated the approach. The "Crazy Good" brand platform, which PRWeek has traced to its 2004 launch, gave the creative team a tonal foundation — absurdist, self-aware, unafraid of the ridiculous — that made the edible mascot feel like an authentic extension of the brand's voice rather than a one-off stunt. Weber Shandwick served as both creative originator and public relations distributor, an integrated role that ensured the story was seeded and amplified across media simultaneously.
The First Edible Mascot delivered the single-biggest earned media campaign in Pop-Tarts' history. According to Clapboard's editorial analysis, the results across search, impressions, and social engagement established a measurable before-and-after moment for the brand in the United States market.
Pop-Tarts searches spiked seven times higher on game day compared to the brand's annual average, according to campaign data cited by Marketing Dive and Front Office Sports. That spike represented Pop-Tarts' largest single-day search increase in nearly a decade, as reported by Front Office Sports. The campaign accumulated more than 4 billion impressions, according to data published by Marketing Dive and corroborated by Cannes Lions award documentation. It also acquired a value of one million dollars in first-party data, as stated in campaign records cited by Quad and Marketing Dive. The campaign generated fifteen times more brand mentions than the ten other non-Kellanova-sponsored bowl games combined. Over 80% of all game-related media coverage featured the edible mascot as its central subject.
The awards record confirms the industry's assessment of the work's quality. Cannes Lions awarded the campaign the Brand Experience and Activation Grand Prix on June 20, 2024, as reported by Reel Chicago and Marketing Dive. The Clio Awards granted the campaign its Grand Prize in 2024. The ANDY Awards recognised the campaign with Gold in the Idea category in 2024. Sentiment analysis of Reddit discussion threads documented overwhelmingly positive audience reactions centered on the campaign's theatrical commitment and advertising effectiveness, according to Reddit community records reviewed by Clapboard. The New York Times declared the Pop-Tarts Bowl had "won the internet," a verdict that functioned as both cultural validation and additional earned media.
Pop-Tarts debuted the first-ever edible mascot at the inaugural Pop-Tarts Bowl on December 28, 2023. Created by Weber Shandwick, the stunt featured a human-sized, food-safe mascot costume eaten by college football players live on national television in the United States, generating over 4 billion impressions according to Marketing Dive.
Weber Shandwick created the campaign, acting as both creative and public relations agency for Kellanova and Pop-Tarts. Burke Boggio-Hair served as Creative Director on the project. The core concept of feeding an edible mascot to players on national television emerged during early brainstorm sessions, as documented by Weber Shandwick's published account of the campaign.
The campaign won the Cannes Lions Brand Experience and Activation Grand Prix on June 20, 2024, as reported by Marketing Dive and Reel Chicago. It also received the Clio Awards Grand Prize and ANDY Awards Gold in the Idea category in 2024, and earned a Clapboard Score of 88 out of 100 from Clapboard's editorial team.
Pop-Tarts searches rose seven times above the brand's annual average on game day, marking the largest single-day spike in nearly a decade according to Front Office Sports. The campaign produced more than 4 billion impressions per Marketing Dive, generated fifteen times more brand mentions than ten competing bowl games combined, and acquired one million dollars in first-party data value.
Pop-Tarts' "Crazy Good" platform, active since 2004 as documented by PRWeek, built the brand's identity around absurdist humor and anthropomorphized pastry characters willing to be eaten. The edible mascot extended that logic to its theatrical limit. Kellanova relaunched the pastry character format in 2022 through the "Agents of Crazy Good" campaign, as reported by Provoke Media.
Pop-Tarts needed to expand its identity beyond breakfast in the United States snacking market. College football offered a live, high-attention environment capable of generating the cultural scale required. The Pop-Tarts Bowl gave Kellanova naming rights and creative control, allowing Weber Shandwick to build the edible mascot ritual as the event's defining moment rather than a peripheral sponsorship placement.
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