Why Kellanova's Jenn Carkner put Cornelius at the heart of breakfast

Jenn Carkner has spent her career reshaping how some of the world’s most familiar brands show up in culture.

After cutting her teeth at Colgate-Palmolive, she joined Kellogg’s (now Kellanova) more than two decades ago, progressing from Canadian sales roles to leading Kellogg's cereal transformation in Europe based in Ireland. It’s been a journey powered by commercial acumen, creative ambition and an instinct for building her teams as thoughtfully as she builds brands.

Carkner relocated to Europe during the pandemic with her family, taking on responsibility for a billion-dollar cereal portfolio across 30 markets. Her brief sounds simple: reignite category growth. But it comes with much complexity, not least changes to regulatory practices. She describes it as “the job of a lifetime”.

That job - part commercial transformation, part cultural reawakening - has taken vivid shape through Cornelius, the rooster now at the heart of Kellogg's first masterbrand platform, 'See You in the Morning', created by Leo UK. The campaign has dragged cereal back into the cultural conversation, turned a century of legacy into something sharp and modern, and given the business a true creative centre of gravity.

The ‘See You In The Morning’ platform is set to widen further; the Kellanova innovation pipeline is stretching across breakfast and snacking; and the European organisation is reshaping everything from supply chain to communications.

The career detour that defined everything

Carkner's path looks straightforward at first: a business degree in Ontario; an accelerated management programme at Colgate; a series of sales roles. But after a decade the story took an interesting turn that led her to marketing.

At associate-director level, she surprised many by voluntarily stepping back into a brand manager role. “I took a step back to leap forward - it felt like being paid to go back to school,” she says.

This gave her the fundamentals she now credits with shaping her leadership. She soon led marketing operations, then early digital transformation, before moving into innovation - eventually launching Cheez-It in Canada. “I realised pretty early that I loved understanding what makes people tick,” she says.

Re-engineering breakfast

Today, Carkner oversees a category undergoing structural change. Consumers expect more functionally, seek affordable options from own-brand, shop more promiscuously - and snack more often. Her response is holistic rather than piecemeal: evolving the supply chain, sharpening communications, and modernising the product portfolio.

The cultural truth underpinning the work is disarmingly human: mornings are personal.

Modern breakfast isn’t about perfect family scenes; it’s fragmented, individual, improvised. Recognising this, 'See You in the Morning' isn’t nostalgia - it’s acknowledgement that Kellogg's brands are almost familial and that the brand sees you, however your morning needs to begin. “Everyone needs ‘you-do-you’ time in the morning,” she says. “That’s the emotional anchor.”

This strategic reframe opens doors: from innovations for older “active agers” to playful moments for families, to experimentation in cereal snacking and cross-category collaborations.

“Our approach is holistic,” she says. “We’re evolving how we make food, how we communicate, and how we show up culturally. And we’re doing it with a real commercial lens.”

From this insight flows a matrix of priorities - reformulated recipes, stronger in-store presence, greater value in a cost-squeezed economy - and a sharper understanding of audience: families who need reassurance; older, active consumers who want to live longer and better; and younger consumers whose definition of breakfast increasingly stretches into snacking. Meanwhile, snacking itself is becoming central to cereal’s future.

“There’s a huge appetite for cereal as a snack,” she notes. Collaborations across categories, she hints, may soon follow.

Backing the bird

‘Cornelius’ started with a strategic realisation: the Kellogg masterbrand was vastly underleveraged and, at the same time, Kellanova could not support all 17 of its cereal brands meaningfully. It needed a centre of gravity.

The team made the decision to concentrate on ‘Cornelius,’ the iconic, previously two-dimensional, rooster from the Corn Flakes box. This was despite the fact that most people didn’t even know his name, Carkner admits.

But once creatives met him - literally, in costume during briefing - he swiftly took on a role big enough to carry the platform. His transformation from cardboard silhouette to charismatic 3D protagonist was swift.

Rather than leaning on AI, the work had a crafted, cinematic confidence that cut through. Cornelius now appears across social, in-store and PR, including a towering weathervane at the Wrexham factory - a symbol of renewed direction.

Similarly, the campaign’s standout “OG” out-of-home execution, born from the cropped Kellogg logo, signalled new confidence and coherence. “It felt bold. Brave. Our creative partners came to us proactively with it - they had skin in the game,” she says.

"'See You in the Morning' will be here to stay. It’s a promise as much as a platform.”

How creativity happens

Carkner has tight, simple criteria for effective marketers. “Curiosity, consumer closeness and a commercial lens,” she says. “That’s what unlocks creativity.”

But process matters. The best creativity happens under conditions of genuine trust - something she is insistent about cultivating with agencies. “It starts with shared ambition,” she says. “We all wanted career-defining work.”

Her creative inspirations are telling: enduring platforms with deep humanity - Dove ‘Real Beauty’, Heinz, Cadbury ‘Generosity’ - as well as Apple’s ability to turn purpose into product and behaviour. “That’s creativity transforming culture,” she says, approvingly. “That’s what inspires me.”

Carkner is relentlessly commercial - but just as motivated by building high-performing, fulfilled teams. “I love creating environments where people shine,” she says. “That’s where the best work comes from. Clients get the work they ask for.” The environment and partnership that she has built with the team at Leo is evidence, if needed, of this approach.

It’s not a threat - more a reminder of responsibility. Agency partnerships are treated as relationships, not transactions, with shared goals.

Built to Last

At a time when FMCG is being pulled between private-label pressure, cultural fragmentation, regulation and wavering trust, Carkner’s approach is a confident reaction to be distinctive; be culturally coherent; be commercially exacting; and bet big on what you believe in for the long-term.

Because for all the rooster theatrics, there is something wonderfully simple at the heart of Kellanova’s new dawn. See you in the morning, indeed.