UPDATE: Ogilvie and Mather were awarded the 2008 Grand Clio for "best integrated campaign" for the "diamond Shreddie" concept.

When Hunter Somerville created the world's first "diamond Shreddie" in September 2006 by pivoting a piece of the waffled whole wheat cereal onto a 45 degree angle, he didn't have a clue it would inspire a landmark ad campaign destined to spark debate at checkout counters and win fawning accolades within the very industry it parodies — all while selling a truckload of cereal and revitalizing a sleepy brand. At the time, though, the virtuosity of his cereal play didn't summon a "Eureka!" moment. "I thought it was the stupidest, worst idea ever," he says. The 26-year-old intern at the Toronto ad agency Ogilvy & Mather was grappling with the sort of joe job interns are saddled with — in this case thinking up a fun concept for the back of the Shreddies box. Meanwhile, the agency's senior creative brains were working on client Post Cereals' request for a big idea that would get customers thinking about the 67-year-old cereal again. Shreddies, sold only in Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand, comprises a big part of Post's cereal portfolio, says Jennifer Hutchinson, Post's director of marketing. Yet the brand had not had a major marketing push since the cartoon Shreddies, "Freddie" and "Eddie," served as mascots some 15 years ago, in the days when the cereal was known by the insipid jingle "Good, good, whole wheat Shreddies." "It's one of the well-loved, but boring brands," says Nancy Vonk, Ogilvy's chief creative officer, one of the masterminds behind Dove's heralded "campaign for real beauty."

Somerville, a native of London, Ont., had been working at Ogilvy for three months; it was his second ad agency job after a failed stint on the improv circuit. "I got into advertising because I thought I could write funnier than what was out there," he explains. That was the extent of his ambition for the back of the box, he says: "I figured if I can't write the big idea, I might as well make them laugh." When Somerville's "old" square Shreddie/"new" diamond-shaped Shreddie idea was unveiled to the senior Ogilvy team, he wasn't even present. People laughed out loud, Vonk recalls. The concept was seized upon as the basis of a larger campaign that would encompass billboard, television, print and the Internet, as well as a new "Diamond Shreddies" box.

Thus was born the world's first advertising campaign to actually create the product being sold. By tilting an old product on its side, literally, it succeeded in tilting it afresh in consumers' imaginations as well. And in the process, it also skewered the hollow emperor's-new-clothes essence of "new and improved" product boasts and misplaced attempts to update classic brands. In such a landscape, the most radical change is, wait for it: no change at all. Such a meta-ironic sensibility, of course, has become a cultural staple, familiar to viewers of Borat or The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. There should be little surprise Somerville has a picture of Colbert posted on the wall of his office. "He's a genius," he says. "It's his tone, which is like the tone of this campaign. Whenever I get stuck on something I think, 'How would Stephen Colbert do this?' "

Just as The Colbert Report is a faux news show mimicking the conventions of an actual news show, the creative path of the "new" Diamond Shreddies campaign traced the footsteps of an actual "new" cereal launch. Comedian Kerry Griffin conducted focus groups, interviewing 15 people before video cameras. The Ogilvy team expected humour to spring from people taking offence at being treated like fools and lashing back at Griffin. That didn't happen. Rather, the spots serve as case studies in bovine consumer acceptance. Participants politely answered absurd questions such as "Does the diamond Shreddie taste better than the square one?" ("It had more punch," avowed one man, nodding), and "Rank Diamond Shreddies as an animal, from an amoeba up to an elephant" ("A kangaroo," said one woman). One man who said he thought the two shapes looked the same was cowed when Griffin made the analogy with the numbers six and nine. "When you turn a six over it's a nine," Griffin told him patiently. "But a six is very different from a nine." The proceedings also highlighted the dubious efficacy of focus groups, one of the altars the advertising industry worships at. Vonk concedes they possess a fatal flaw: "I don't think people always say what they really think," she says. When told they'd been pranked, all but one participant agreed to allow the footage to be aired.

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