Cereal Madness! 
                                                                      By:  Jenn Lanphear

Project at a Glance :

This project is designed for a high school Sports Marketing class. Students will have the opportunity to design all parts of a new cereal (the box, price, commercial, and the actual cereal) using their prior knowledge of the components of the Marketing Mix, as well as target markets.
       
Driving Question:

How can we use the Marketing Mix to design the next  great cereal?           

Standards:

• Illustrate an understanding of the different parts of the Marketing Mix and the importance of making your target market happy.

Team / Culture Building:

• 6 Word Memoir: Catering it to their history/feelings/love for cereal.  Post in class for others to read.
• Values Cards: Great way to see strengths of different team members.​​​

• Inner Heroes: What roles might each person take on within the team? How does each person attack this type of project?

​Entry Event:

• Cereal Madness Bracket- students in all Sports Marketing classes are polled on Google Forms for their top 4 cereals. Then, data from all classes are combined to find the top 8 cereals overall.
• Bracketology - use this protocol to  determine the overall champion and explain their whys for how they chose winners.
• Cereal taste testing activity.

Stakeholders:

• Parents
• Students
• FDA
• Grocery Stories
• Farmers
• Advertising agents
• Cereal companies

Empathy Building:

• Stakeholder Maps - think about Who cares about our new cereal? Push students to think beyond just parents and kids. Narrow down to top 4 and describe why they're the most important.
• Empathy Maps
• Using the top 4 from the stakeholder maps, design an empathy map for each of them.  Each group can choose their own top 4 stakeholders.​ ​

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Need to Know Activity - Students will have prior knowledge of the Marketing Mix (product, place, price, promotion) and target markets.  They will need to research and answer the following questions:  What are nutritional guidelines?  What is the process to put a new product into the marketplace?  What cereals are already out there that you might not know about?  What cereals exist in other countries?  How does a company pick the theme/character?  Is cereal as popular as it once was? What are the top breakfast foods?​  Is cereal only for breakfast?
• Possible trip to the store to study the cereal aisle (Or could the grocery managers make videos?)
• Research the FDA requirements for foods/breakfast foods.  What trends are popular today?  What are nutrition requirements in other countries? Could we get in contact with a cereal company? ​

Incubation:

• Students will have voice in choice while choosing the theme for their cereal.
• Use the Idea Quota protocol to generate cereal ideas.   ​​

• Followed by the Anti-Problem strategy, thinking about what the worst cereal might be like.​

Checking in:

• Teacher will be consistently walking around the room and checking in with groups as they are working (daily).
• Mini conferences with groups
• Check their group collaboration location to see that work is being completed on one of the following platforms (Google Slides, Jamboard, Padlet)
• Have students check in on each other
• Exit tickets​

• Critical friends: pair up groups to check in on each other and provide feedback.

---

Solution Building:

• Discuss the results of the Idea Quota protocol and decide which ideas may be  be feasible.
• Dot Voting: as a group pick your individual top ideas
• $100 Test: take your top ideas and then decide how much money you would put toward that idea and why.

Critique and Revision: 

• Seeking A Skeptic: ask friends, siblings, parents about your idea and see what they say.
• Elevator Pitch: Students pitch their idea to the class and get initial feedback, also seeing if they have any “competitors” in the class.​

Authentic Audience:

• Meijer employees
• Family Fare employees
• Administrators
• Elementary students
• Classmates

Final Presentation:

• Create a presentation to show the process and solution idea/s.
• Students design the product, price and promotion for their cereal.​

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• Audience will provide feedback in the form of . . . I like, I wish, I wonder and whether they or their parents would purchase the product.​

Click here for the teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:

Jenn Lanphear teaches Sports Marketing, Intro to Business, Entrepreneurship, Financial Management, and Accounting at Hudsonville High School.  

     "I love that teaching business classes allows me the opportunity to incorporate PBL into my classes every trimester. These projects allow students to have authentic experiences with authentic audiences that have real world applications."