At first glance, it looked like a relic of celebrity culture gone slightly sideways. Grainy paparazzi photos surfaced showing William Shatner, 94, eating a bowl of Raisin Bran in his car while stuck in Los Angeles traffic. Awkward. Mundane. Weirdly intimate. The kind of image more likely to land on TMZ than in a brand deck.
Then came a second set of photos. This time, Shatner was stepping out of a car with a box of Raisin Bran tucked under his arm, as if he’d just popped out to restock his pantry. At that point, the coincidence started to strain belief. Why was Shatner suddenly being paparazzi’d like a Marvel lead — and why was cereal always involved?
As it turns out, the answer is simple and very Super Bowl–era marketing. The photos were a deliberately staged pregame rollout for Raisin Bran’s first-ever Super Bowl ad, confirmed by a spokesperson for creative agency VaynerMedia.
The brand will air its spot just ahead of halftime on streaming platforms, with additional regional placements during the broadcast. It also marks the first Super Bowl appearance for parent company WK Kellogg Co in roughly 15 years.
The cereal’s Big Game debut is framed as a humorous nudge toward digestive health, tapping into growing consumer interest in wellness and nutrition. In other words, fiber is having a moment. Some marketers are even calling this year’s event the “Wellness Bowl,” as brands reframe indulgence through a health-conscious lens.
The rise of the staged paparazzi rollout
Shatner’s cereal sightings aren’t a one-off stunt. They’re part of a broader shift in how brands approach Super Bowl advertising. What used to be a single 30-second reveal has evolved into a multi-week spectacle, where intrigue and speculation are baked into the media plan.
In this case, the faux-candid images were designed to lay the groundwork for the campaign. Gossip sites, social feeds, and group chats provided the amplification, turning curiosity into conversation before the ad itself even airs.
Raisin Bran is following a playbook popularized in recent years by brands like CeraVe and Velveeta, which have both leaned into staged celebrity sightings to blur the line between tabloid culture and advertising. CeraVe famously sent Michael Cera wandering New York with bags of moisturizer, sparking weeks of speculation. Velveeta dispatched Julia Fox to a Knicks game sporting a branded hair look. In each case, the images weren’t leaked. They were choreographed.
For Raisin Bran, Shatner is the perfect punchline. His outsized persona turns the idea of being “caught” with cereal into a joke in itself. By the time the reveal lands, it feels less like a bait-and-switch and more like a wink to the audience.
According to TMZ, Shatner later admitted the photos were staged for the commercial, calling them “one of the silliest” setups he’s ever posed for. The final ad reportedly places him aboard a spaceship — a far cry from eating breakfast behind the wheel — and leans fully into the brand’s core message about fiber and, yes, digestive regularity.
If the goal was to get a fiber-forward cereal into the Super Bowl conversation before kickoff, the strategy worked. Shatner went from cereal bowl to Super Bowl without ever needing to say a word — proving once again that in the modern Big Game economy, the campaign often starts long before the ad.
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