Quaker, Tropicana Join Airline Miles Program in Canada

Quaker and Tropicana are giving breakfast a little altitude in Canada.

The brands have signed a multi-year deal with loyalty marketing firm Aeroplan to put Aeroplan Miles on packages of breakfast foods.

Beginning in January, Quaker and Tropicana packages will carry codes good for 10 Aeroplan Miles. Members bank their miles online at aeroplan.com or breakfastcentral.ca, using their Aeroplan account number and the on-pack code to deposit new miles.

The two brands, marketed by Mississauga, Ontario-based Pepsi-QTG Canada, will support the tie-in with occasional promotions, including contests and bonus-mile offers.

Quaker and Tropicana are the first packaged-goods partners in Aeroplan’s network of 100 partner brands, all in financial, retail and travel. Adding Quaker and Tropicana gives Montreal-based Aeroplan entry to supermarket shelves.

“This partnership enables Aeroplan to dramatically increase the number of locations where members may earn miles, and it represents a unique and valuable opportunity to demostrate the power of the Aeroplan Mile to influence purchasing behavior in key product categories,” said Rob Shields, Aeroplans’ vice president of partnerships, in a statement.

The program gives the brands a platform to spur repeat purchases. It’s tough to establish purchase continuity in categories like breakfast cereal and juice, where consumers like variety and usually choose from a fairly wide portfolio of brands and flavors.

“A critical component of maintaining a leading edge in the competitive product marketing category is developing unique points of compelling differentiation,” said Tom Hare, Pepsi-QTG Canada’s vice president of marketing, in a statement.

Aeroplan members redeemed 1.35 million roundtrip flights last year.

Putting airline miles on cereal boxes isn’t new. Kellogg Co. and American Airlines shared an extremely successful multi-year alliance that put AAdvantage Miles on boxes of Kellogg cereals. The program began in 2000 and built each year, adding more brands and promotional overlays. But it hit some turbulence in 2003, when a computer error triggered e-mail messages telling thousands of consumers that they had won 25,000 miles. (There were only 60 such prizes, in fact.) Kellogg apologized and sent each household 500 free miles as a goodwill gesture.