Maddever praised the way the campaign has engaged the marketplace. "It's brilliant from the point of view of getting people involved in a way that they're intrigued — not annoyed but intrigued. So much advertising that doesn't have a good idea has to make noise another way, and it's the noisy noise, the noise that does annoy you. This is the opposite of that."

Indeed, Diamond Shreddies has taken on a life of its own culturally. In April, George Gould, a retired lawyer in Surrey, B.C., with a puckish sense of humour, made the news when he auctioned off "the last square Shreddie" on eBay. He sent Kraft a mock note requesting confirmation it wouldn't be making any more square Shreddies. He received back an earnest form letter explaining "diamond Shreddies are simply a square Shreddie piece that has been turned at a 45 degree angle. We hope that this encourages people who eat Shreddies to look at Shreddies in a whole new way — and to have a good laugh as well!" The company also sent Gould a free coupon that he used along with his US$36 windfall from the "last square Shreddie" sale to buy eight boxes of Diamond Shreddies, later donated to a local food bank.

Whether the Diamond Shreddies boxes will become collector's items destined for eBay auction is unclear. Hutchinson says they will be phased out when the "win a diamond" boxes are all sold. The brand has been revived in consumers' minds, she says, with buzz translating into national sales increases in the double digits.

Vonk wants to keep the campaign rolling. "We're plotting what we're going to do next," she says. (There are backstage murmurs of a Diamond Shreddie "recall," another risky ploy given the negative associations with "recall" in the consumer lexicon.) Vonk predicts the Diamond Shreddies approach will influence the way both Shreddies and Kraft advertise. "Most campaigns come and go," she says. "But this one altered the history of the brand." Within Kraft, the campaign has become a touchstone against which new pitches are measured, says Hutchinson.

Industry watchers are keeping tabs. "I'm interested in seeing how the campaign develops," says Bradley. "My worry would be that the parody overtakes the core idea, which was reminding people how great Shreddies are. They've got to stay focused on keeping attention on Shreddies. It's hard to keep that kind of campaign focused on original objectives and it's easy to get carried away with the fun and creativity of mocking industry conventions."

Industry consultant Burghardt believes the Diamond Shreddies could go down as one of the great Canadian ads, though he says it belongs in a new genre: "It's more in the category of a hugely successful gimmick," he says. "It will be imitated for sure."

Hopes are high at Ogilvy that the work will be rewarded at next week's Clio Awards in Miami, a big event in the American advertising calendar. They're the warm-up for the prestigious Cannes Lions awards, the Academy Awards of international advertising, in France this June. The June issue of Strategy, to be distributed at the event, will feature the cover line "Canada continues to tilt heads at Cannes," illustrated with a Diamond Shreddie.

Already a star is born in Somerville, who was hired full-time at Ogilvy as a copywriter in January 2007. His current client roster includes Shreddies as well as Post's Honeycomb, for which he invented Bee Boy, a wild child raised by bees. "I'm a cereal killer," he jokes. His Diamond Shreddies home run bemuses him. Shreddies was his favourite cereal growing up, he says. Of his breakfast-food epiphany, he is modest. "It was a fluke," he says. "You could make a really bad CanCon movie about it." Still, he knows his is a Cinderella story. "And I'm the prettiest girl at the ball," he says with Colbert-esque mock seriousness. There's one after-effect of the campaign he can't shake, he says. "I think I've given myself Stockholm syndrome. Because I do believe the diamonds taste better. It sounds stupid, but they really do."

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