The front of the Wheaties box has served as a hall of fame for some of the greatest athletes of all time, from baseball star Lou Gehrig to boxer Muhammid Ali, basketball legend Michael Jordan, and seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. Now, a fresh face is gracing the box’s hallowed orange frame: Marty Mauser, the fictional ping-pong player played by Timothée Chalamet in A24’s upcoming film Marty Supreme.
The cereal box comes just weeks after A24 released a now-viral 18-minute long parody of a marketing meeting to promote the movie (which releases on Christmas). In that video, Chalamet joins a Zoom call full of supposed marketing executives and proceeds to fill up the meeting’s airtime with increasingly ridiculous suggestions for the film’s marketing efforts, leaving the eight other members of the call scrambling to accommodate his wild ideas. Since then, several of the comedic ideas have, astonishingly, become reality—including an ad campaign on bright orange blimps and, now, a $25 limited-edition Wheaties box.
Our current era of movie marketing is dominated by discussion of properties like Barbie and Wicked, which have rewritten the roles of brand partnerships by flooding stores everywhere with hundreds of collabs per film (Wicked part one, for example, netted more than 400 collabs). When Barbie can show up on a Heinz bottle and Elphaba in a box of mac ‘n cheese, the novelty of movie-branded partnerships can start to wear off.
A24 is combatting that consumer fatigue with a masterclass marketing campaign for Marty Supreme. Its co-branded merch balances scarcity, which makes every drop feel aspirational, with a kind of unexpected flair that makes perfect sense for the film—and for its audience of young Chalamet fans.
How Marty Supreme is courting its young audience
In late November, Chalamet posted the address of a New York storefront with the message, “C u at 7.” By 4:30, fans were lined up around the block.
They were queuing to get their hands on what turned out to be a line of Marty Supreme-themed merch, designed by the luxury L.A.-based brand Nahmias. Every item sold out, but one in particular—a $250 windbreaker inspired by an outfit from the show—was the clear star of the show. Since then, it’s sold for $5,000 on Grailed and become a topic of considerable discourse on Reddit, where users are avidly yearning for a bigger drop.
The Marty Supreme marketing campaign is leaning unabashedly on Chalamet’s star power and influence with a younger, primarily male audience—and clearly, it’s working. Chalamet’s audience wants a piece of his effortless swagger, and that becomes even more desirable when, instead of being available on the shelves of every local Target and countless digital Amazon storefronts (Wicked, we’re looking at you), his Marty Supreme collabs are only available in the most limited of supply. That thought process clearly also applies to this new collab with Wheaties.
Why the Marty Supreme marketing campaign is genius, actually
Like the windbreaker, the Wheaties collab is directly tied to a moment in the film, when Marty, (who’s portrayed as an extremely confident, assertive salesman), says, “It’s only a matter of time before I’m staring at you from the cover of a Wheaties box.”
It’s also a reference to the aforementioned Zoom parody, wherein Chalamet tries to convince the marketing team that Marty deserves a spot on the Wheaties box alongside names like Michael Jordan. “To me, it’s marketing 101,” Chalamet says in the video. Apparently, the team at Wheaties agrees.
“For more than 100 years, Wheaties has celebrated iconic athletes and moments in culture that transcend boundaries, from sports to unexpected heroes,” says Emilie Knox, vice president and business unit director of cereal at General Mills. “Marty Supreme fits squarely into that tradition as he embodies determination, heart, and the belief that greatness can come from the most unexpected places.”
When designing the box, the Wheaties team leaned into its most recognizable brand elements, including its iconic orange—which, coincidentally, is also the central color of Marty Supreme—and the featured figure front-and-center.
A fictional athlete, with real return?
General Mills produced several thousand of the special edition boxes, each at the hefty price point of $25, which Knox says reflects the collectible nature of the box and its limited run. On Reddit, users are skeptical of the cost. One commenter wrote, “This would be a cool giveaway gift, but for $25 you will not be staring at me from the cover of a Wheaties box”—a sentiment that appears to be shared by several others.
Wheaties declined to share specific numbers, but as of this writing, the limited box is already ‘sold out’ on the A24 website after going less just a day ago, creating a sense of scarcity among consumers (though it’s still available through Wheaties’ site). According to Knox, the early response has been “extremely strong, with collectors moving quickly” to get their hands on a box.
“A24’s marketing team has been incredible partners,” Knox says. “The playful teasers leading up to the drop, like the Zoom marketing call seen around the world, were driven by their creative genius, and we’ve had a lot of fun working together to continue building fan excitement.”
Marty Supreme’s marketing prioritizes depth over breadth, opting to prioritize a few deeply thought-out collabs over an all-out blitz. Ironically, by limiting its marketing’s scope and availability, the film’s team has managed to break through the sea of content online and reach new audiences.