You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

Picture in your mind Froot Loops cereal. Y’know, the one with the little ring shaped cereal pieces, colored red and orange and blue and green and probably some other colors, each meant to evoke a different flavor of fruit (despite all tasting exactly the same).

Now picture a commercial for Froot Loops. You’re probably imagining something bright and colorful and full of energy, clearly aimed at the kids in the audience, most likely featuring cartoon mascot Toucan Sam, and assuring you at the end that Froot Loops is “part of a complete breakfast”. Probably something rather close to this:

This is the type of commercial Froot Loops has done for decades. They know what appeals to kids, and kids are the ones most interested in this sort of sugary breakfast cereal, right?

Well, in a recent ad, it seems Froot Loops has decided to shift gears, to target a different audience with a suitably different approach:

This is a clear attempt at marketing Froot Loops to grownups, and the ways this differs from advertising to kids is rather revealing.

First off, it no longer bills itself as a breakfast food – the commercial is explicitly set at night, and the “Public Snacking Announcement” frames Froot Loops as a snackfood, not part of a meal, complete or otherwise.

The target audience is no longer little tykes who’d gladly eat bowls of sugar every meal of every day. Nor is it parents who just want their kids to shut up and finish breakfast before it’s time for school, even if that means serving them a great big helping of sugar, so long as there’s a fig leaf of nutritional value. Their aim is now on adults buying Froot Loops to eat themselves, and there’s no fooling them into thinking this is a remotely healthy meal choice – to sell it, you’ve got to be upfront about it being a snacktime indulgence.

That leads to another key difference. In this ad, Froot Loops is no longer a burst of energy and joy to start your day off right. No, it comes at the end of the day – at the end of a long, hard, soul-draining day, when you just want a little something sweet to chase off your demons, if only for a moment. Because that’s adulthood for ya, am I right?

And, here’s the kicker, it specifically focuses its attention on women frustrated at still being single while all their friends are getting married. Applied more broadly, it seems like the audience they’re going for is adults who feel like their lives are not on track, who are unhappy with their circumstances but don’t know how to change them, who come home at the end of the day feeling depressed and alone and desperate for something to make them feel better. Something like a sugar rush, delivered in the form of a colorful cereal they remember from their childhood, when they were so much happier … so much happier …

Feels like someone at Kellogg’s did market research into what sort of adults still eat Froot Loops cereal … and their results were not flattering.