We may as well all give up because Surreal just won 2024

The work is best summed up as ‘New Year, New You, No Way’.

Surreal is billed as a ‘better’ cereal, but whilst everyone would expect them to bowl in with a slick health campaign they, apparently, can’t be bothered—and I love them for it.

We, the people, still exhausted by two years of Covid home-schooling or navigating hybrid life. We, the people, still coming through the December 23 horror flu or the extra weight of carrying the work for those poor colleagues struck down. We, the people, who really need the year to actually start on 8 January when all the cheese and chocolate have been finished—this is for us.

But, of course, the cleverest bit is they really could be arsed to pretend they can’t be arsed.

This campaign takes a clever twist on behaviour, risking breaking brand identity rules with a painfully good eye for detail.

In the words of Dolly Parton: “Honey, it takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap”, and Surreal has nailed it.

Insight: nailed
Mood: nailed
Execution: nailed (multiple times from the PNG to the shit PPT, they were so bang on it hurt).

It doesn’t just sell cereal, it speaks to us.

And another thing: in an age of logos converging into sameness and AI churning out identi-copy, this is art direction antithesis. This observational about-turn absolutely wins.

A brand is about memory structure, but it’s also about memorability. The work is a shit tonne of different shitnotshit executions, but it’s also the surprising pop you expect from the cereal that brought you ‘We’re Dwayne Johnson’s favourite cereal’

Whatever people say cereal would do, that’s what it’s not, to paraphrase the Arctics.

To conclude, however. I must admit, I lied in the title: we shouldn’t give up already. We should keep going. Take Surreal as January’s (un)fitspo and raise it.

364 days left and just think how many ideas are waiting in the wings to hit you in the feels. Let’s get down to making them.