By 
I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.
It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many consumers felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of oats and marshmallows, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. I’ll try to explain how this happened.
For the past five years, my greatest fear for Lucky Charms has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in marshmallows to success in oats. Most cereals that are great at something – like Raisin Bran or Cinnamon Toast Crunch – do not become great at new things people want (marshmallows for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business. Eventually these cereals realize their error of not focusing enough on the new thing, and then the cereal fights desperately and hopelessly to recover. Cereals rarely get soggy from moving too fast, and they frequently get soggy from moving too slowly.
When Lucky Charms are evolving rapidly, however, I need to be extra-communicative. This is the key thing I got wrong.
In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success. We have done very well for a long time by steadily improving our breakfast cereal, without doing much breakfast communication. Inside Lucky Charms I say, “Breakfast speaks louder than words,” and we should just keep improving our cereal.
But now I see that given the huge changes we have been recently making, I should have personally given a full justification to our consumers of why we are separating oats and marshmallows, and charging for both. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.
So here is what we are doing and why:
Many consumers love our toasted oat pieces, as I do, because nearly every nutrient on Earth is available in our oats, plus lots of fun and exciting shapes. We want to advertise the breadth of our incredible oaten offering so that as many people as possible know it still exists, and it is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of vitamins and minerals. Toasted oats in cereal may not last forever, but we want it to last as long as possible.
I also love our marshmallows because they taste great, and I can eat them anytime I want. The benefits of our marshmallow pieces are really quite different from the benefits of oat pieces. We feel we need to focus on rapid improvement as marshmallow shape and flavor technology and the market evolve, without having to maintain compatibility with our oat breakfast.
So we realized that marshmallows and toasted oats are becoming two quite different cereals, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 55 years of making processed oats with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our plain oat cereal to “Justoats”.
We chose the name Justoats because it refers to the cereal being just oats. We will keep the name “Lucky Charms” for our marshmallow-only cereal.
Justoats will be the same General Mills cereal that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and breakfast eaters will go to the cereal aisle to access their breakfast and enjoy their oats. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a multi-grain upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for extra-fiber, for those who want to eat rice, wheat and barley pieces. Consumers have been asking for multi-grain Lucky Charms for many years, and now that toasted oats has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. Another advantage of separate cereals is simplicity for our consumers. Each cereal will be focused on just one thing (oats or marshmallows) and will be even easier to eat. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Justoats and Lucky Charms (marshmallows only!) will not be integrated. So if you purchase both cereals, and if you need to reseal a bag or cut a box top, you would need to do it in two places. Similarly, if you pour milk into your Justoats, it doesn’t show up in your bowl of marshmallows, and vice-versa.
There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). Consumers who eat both cereals will have two entries on their grocery store receipts, one for Justoats and one for marshmallows-only Lucky Charms. The total will be the same as the current prices.
Bernie Rickson, who has been working on our oat service for 12 years, and leading it for the last 4 years, will be the chief overseer of Justoats. Bernie and I made a short welcome video of us eating our new cereal. (You’ll probably say we should stick to just making cereals and avoid eating them.) We will let you know in a few weeks when our Justoats cereal is up and ready. It is merely a renamed version of Lucky Charms, but with the absence of any marshmallows whatsoever. You won’t have to do anything special if you already carefully eat around the marshmallows.
For me the Lucky Charms red box has always been a source of joy. The new box is still that distinctive red, but now it will have a Justoats logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be the same for many of you. We’ll also return to marketing our marshmallow service, with its variety of shapes, now with the Lucky Charms brand.
Some consumers will likely feel that we shouldn’t split the businesses, and that we shouldn’t rename our toasted oat cereal. Our view is with this split of the cereals, we will be better at marshmallows, and we will be better at oats. It is possible we are moving too fast – it is hard to say. But going forward, Justoats will continue to run the best oat cereal ever, throughout the United States. Lucky Charms will offer the best cereal for marshmallow-lovers and oat-haters alike, hopefully on a global basis. The additional marshmallow shapes we have coming in the next few months are substantial, and we are always working to improve our flavors further.
I want to acknowledge and thank our many consumers that stuck with us, and to apologize again to those eaters of breakfast, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.
Both the Justoats and Lucky Charms teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Breakfast speaks louder than words. But words help people to understand breakfast.
Respectfully yours,
-Creeb Tatlin, Co-Founder and chief overseer of Lucky Charms, General Mills
