Disney, Kellogg Sign Marketing Alliance

Tony the Tiger is getting company.

Beginning early next year, Mickey Mouse and his friends will be showing up on breakfast tables across America.

Kellogg Co., the world’s leading producer of cereal, said Wednesday that it reached a marketing alliance with Walt Disney Co., giving it the exclusive right to develop and market breakfast foods based on a range of new and old Disney characters.

But the multiyear agreement extends beyond cereal. Kellogg and Disney also agreed to a wide range of joint promotions across Disney’s film, television and theme park divisions. And Kellogg, based in Battle Creek, Mich., will become the official sponsor of breakfast at Walt Disney World, Disneyland and Disneyland Paris.

“This alliance unites two of the world’s most recognized and admired family-focused brands and offers years of unprecedented opportunities,” said Carlos M. Gutierrez, chief executive of Kellogg.

Neither company would disclose financial terms of the alliance.

Marketing alliances are hardly new to Burbank-based Disney, which has corporate deals with such companies as McDonald’s, Kodak, Compaq and General Motors.

But the alliance reflects Disney’s efforts to plant its characters on a range of products--from cereal boxes to juice cartons and toothbrushes. The product blitz is part of an effort to rejuvenate the Disney brand and spur merchandise sales, which have fallen in recent years as Disney characters have faced competition from rivals such as PBS’ Teletubbies and Nickelodeon’s Rugrats.

Disney, for example, signed a deal with Gillette Co. to create toothbrushes with Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear by early next year. This fall, Disney and Coca-Cola Co.’s Minute Maid division will begin pushing vitamin-fortified punch.

“By combining Disney’s powerful content with the quality and equity of the Kellogg’s brand, we will bring innovative products to the breakfast tables of families across the globe,” Disney President Bob Iger said.

A range of Disney characters, including Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan, will be the stars of several new cereal products, Pop-Tarts toaster pastries and Eggo waffles. The products will be rolled out early next year in the U.S. and worldwide in late 2002.

For Kellogg, the agreement goes far beyond one-time promotions it has done with Disney, most recently touting the animated film “Atlantis” on cereal boxes. The agreement ranks among its largest global marketing alliances, a company spokesman said.

But Mickey isn’t about to replace Tony the Tiger, the popular character Kellogg developed in 1952 to promote its Frosted Flakes cereal, said Neil Nyberg, a Kellogg spokesman. “Tony is still alive and well, and he’s going to continue to be part of Frosted Flakes,” he said.

Stephen A. Greyser, professor of consumer marketing at Harvard Business School, said the companies are a natural match.

“The fit is easy to discern,” he said. “Disney is family oriented . . . and Kellogg’s is certainly kid and family oriented,” he said.

The agreement gives Disney “exposure in the part of the supermarket where there’s a lot of shelf space,” he said.

Attaching itself to Disney’s world-renowned brand also allows Kellogg to differentiate itself from other rival brands in a fiercely competitive cereal market, he said.

Disney shares slipped 35 cents to $25.36 Wednesday; Kellogg lost 5 cents to $32.30. Both trade on the New York Stock Exchange.