Thinking with Sam Harrelson

Thinking with Sam Harrelson


Thinking Daily 33: Life Isn’t a Cereal

March 24, 2015


Why I love marketing and why marketing should be an “experience” rather than something you put into a box.


Life was popularized during the 1970s by an advertising campaign featuring “Mikey,” a hard-to-please four-year-old-boy portrayed by John Gilchrist. His two older brothers were portrayed by his real-life brothers, Michael and Tommy. The commercials featured the catchphrase “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” The ad campaign ran from 1972 to 1986, becoming one of the longest-running television advertisements. As recently as 1999 the commercial was included in a list of “memorable ads”. A subsequent commercial repeated the identical dialog and scenario, using lumberjacks instead of children. Earlier when Life cereal was first introduced, the original slogan was “The most useful protein in a ready to eat cereal”. the original mascots (in commercials) were little munchkin-like characters.


Life (Cereal) Wikipedia Article


Subscribe to Thinking Daily in iTunes (and rate it 5 Stars…really helps!)