Cereal commercials (in the US): why so corny?

[elmwood]

A simple question: why are commercials for breakfast cereal so much cornier (no pun intended; I just can't think of a more appropriate word) than commercials for other goods and services?

[tr0psn4j]

Probably because they're marketed towards kids.

[elmwood]

I'm thinking of the cereal commercials that market to adults; not the Saturday morning commercials for cereals like Lucky Charms, but products like Honey Bunches of Oats and Nuts or whatever.

[Dorothea Book]

I don't expose myself to a ton of commercials so maybe I'm not a good judge. But I haven't really noticed a trend for corny adult cereal ads. It seems to me that when not promising that your kids will love it cereal ads are mostly touting some kind of health benefit.

And then there are those incredibly annoying Special K commercials in which a woman, supposedly having lost weight thanks to Special K, coos over her own image in a mirror. These particular commercials are truly awful--but not, I think, corny.


Can you be more specific?

[dropzone]

The Honey Nut Cheerios ads speak to me because I consider Honey Nut Cheerios the food of the gods and wouldn't mind making them a larger part of my diet, except my wife buys the regular ones and when I buy cereal it's usually because I'm jonesing for corn flakes.

[boytyperanma]

It's a side effect of the large corn industry in the US