CATCHING UP WITH SURREAL

You guys make healthy cereals, what was the motivation behind starting the company?
Kit and I were part of the early team at healthy drinks brand, Vita Coco. Both passionate about challenger brands, we were obsessed by the opportunity to disrupt the cereals category. It’s the third biggest category in food & drink, one that we all grew up loving, but had stopped consuming as most brands are either tasty & fun but full of sugar, or healthy, bland and boring. We set out to prove that taste, health & fun didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Your branding is really cool, what’s the story behind it?
We wanted to be a brand that is uplifting and upbeat. Cereal’s always been pretty childish, so why change that. Talking tigers, free toys, endless jingles…it’s as far away from mortgage chat (or a bowl of wheat biscuits) as you can get. So we wanted SURREAL to feel just as childish. It should feel like someone handed the company over to a bunch of big kids and is letting them run riot. Embrace the chaos, choose the funnest options and have a good time – just like kids would.

Your marketing campaigns really make us laugh, how do you come up with them?
There is some method to the madness. We don’t want to be ‘just another cereal company’. We want to be THAT cereal company. THAT cereal company who people talk about, share, and remember. THAT cereal company who are known for doing silly stuff. To do that, we need memorable ideas. John, Ruth and Kit make up the marketing team, and they are to blame for the bulk of what is put out to the outside world. We then have an “ideas” session, called the bowlstorm (original, we know), this session involves the whole team – so Charlotte, our head of Operations could come up with a campaign one week, Winnie the office dog could come up with one the following week.

Why should everyone try eat Surreal?
Our cereals come in four classic flavours – Cocoa, Frosted, Cinnamon, and Peanut Butter (plus the occasional limited edition…). They’re all high protein and zero sugar, with the sort of nutrition you’d normally see in a protein bar, not a cereal bowl. We’re also vegan and gluten free, meaning SURREAL is suitable for all sorts of diets. None of that would mean much if we tasted like cardboard, but don’t worry – we’re just as tasty as the classics we grew up with.