Launching a new brand into a market is always hard, especially when you have big ambitions for its future. Scaled success requires strategy, prolonged determination, and a belief in the brand’s potential.

Snack brand Cheez-It was launched in the UK in August 2024 and has seen strong success in its first year, becoming the biggest launch in the UK salty snacks category for four years, according to Circana. In its first year it generated around £24m in retail value sales, according to Cheez-It, and hit 14.5% household penetration, according to Kantar Worldpanel.

Building on the success of its launch year, parent company Kellanova is eyeing future “iconic” status for the brand, believing there is a clear opportunity for it in the UK market.

Kellanova (previously known as the Kellogg Company) owns snacking brands including Pringles and Pop Tarts, as well as Kellogg’s cereal brands outside of North America. The company aims to make Cheez-It its “next iconic brand in the UK”, says Rui Frias, UK senior marketing manager for salty snacks at the business.

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“Obviously, we already have Pringles, and I think we want Cheez-It – probably not this year or next year but in the future – to get that kind of dimension,” he tells Marketing Week.

Cheez-It began life in the UK with “very little awareness” among consumers, he notes. However, it is by no means a new-to-world brand.

The cheesy snack brand is over 100 years old and is Kellanova’s biggest in the US, with the company reporting it generated around $1.3bn (£997m) in sales in 2024, according to data from NielsenIQ.

While the brand enjoys a position of strength in the US, the business couldn’t assume that what has worked in that market would work for the UK launch.

“They’re two very different markets,” Frias acknowledges, adding that this is both in terms of geography and shopper behaviour.

The brand’s launch strategy took what he describes as a “really UK-centric approach”. The effectiveness of this campaign was celebrated recently when Cheez-It, entered by agency Zeal, picked up the accolade for Excellence in Consumer Goods at the Marketing Week Awards 2025.

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Across the full marketing mix

Before Kellanova could even think about launching the brand into the UK market it was essential it understood a clear role for it to play in the category.

The company identified “two main gaps in the market” where Cheez-It could compete, Frias says. Firstly, most cheesy snacks in the market are targeted at children, with there being an absence of products that were “a bit more elevated”.

Secondly, consumers were missing “authentic” tasting cheese snacks, he says, with many feeling what existed was somewhat “artificial”.

Those gaps meant that the business was firm in its belief that the Cheez-It brand could play a strong role in the category. However, that did not mean it could simply copy and paste what it did in the US.

I would almost say, if there was something we could do, we did it.

Rui Frias, Cheez-It

It thought carefully about its launch strategy in the UK across the full marketing mix. That started with product. In the US, Cheez-It largely exists in the cracker format, but having researched UK consumers, the business opted to launch what it terms a “Snap’d” format, something that falls somewhere between a crisp and a biscuit.

Getting the right price-pack format was also essential to drive the success of the UK launch, Rui notes; for example, it launched large pack formats for sharing occasions and single-serve packs designed to go as snacks for meal deals.

It also thought carefully about how it wanted the brand to appear on shelf, providing shopper toolkits to aid discovery of the products.

While the success of the product in the US gave Kellanova confidence that Cheez-It could do well in the UK, the strategy “wasn’t anything [it] brought directly from the from the US”, Frias notes.

Making the brand ‘unmissable’

Once the business was sure that Kellanova had developed a Cheez-It product suitable for UK consumers and it had driven physical availability, it became about ensuring mental availability for the brand went hand in hand with that, notes Frias.

For Cheez-It, as is the case for any consumer goods brand launching, the priority for the team is to drive awareness of the product, followed by trial, followed by repeat purchase.

“We called it the ‘see it, want it, buy it and repeat it’ model,” says Frias, adding that the team’s goal was to make the brand “unmissable”.

Cheez-It’s first year of life saw the brand team invest £18m to reach over 30 million adults in the UK through TV, social media, radio, out of home, audio and influencers. The brand worked with Rylan Clark, who became a member of the “Cheez-Masons” to symbolise his dedication to cheesy snacks. It also did sampling and worked closely with retailers to give the brand boosted visibility in stores.

“I would almost say, if there was something we could do, we did it,” Frias says.

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With one of the business’s most ambitious above-the-line campaigns ever backing the launch, there was clear confidence in the Cheez-It brand in the UK from the start.

The brand’s massive footprint in the US, as well as the fact it had been successfully expanded into other markets previously were strong factors in filling Kellanova with confidence, notes Frias.

Ultimately, it was how the brand resonated with UK shoppers which gave the business the confidence to throw its weight behind the launch.

“We did loads of shopper research, we did loads of planning, loads of thinking, and I think that further gave us confidence that there was a big opportunity to launch Cheez-It in the UK,” he said.

Beyond launch year

The confidence that Kellanova had in Cheez-It proved completely justified in the brand’s first year, becoming the biggest launch not only for the business but for the category in the last four years.

However, success in the first year doesn’t mean that a brand has achieved “iconic” status as is the ambition with Cheez-It. Frias says the team have confidence they can continue building the brand into the future.

The brand has had a repeat purchase rate of 53%, meaning more than half of those who have bought the product a first time have gone onto buy it again. This gives Frias confidence for Cheez-It’s future.

He says the future will be about taking the lessons from what it has done so far.

For example, Cheez-It’s consumer base skewed older than what the business had initially expected. The brand is now looking to 2026 and even 2027, and is focused on incorporating lessons like that into its media plan.

For Frias, much of what has brought success so far will bring success in the future; namely, driving mental and physical availability.

“A lot of it is about not forgetting that it’s still pretty much an NPD, even though we’ve already now been in the market for over a year, and not getting distracted and staying focused on the basics on how we can really drive the brand,” he said.