Catalina Crunch CMO Targets GLP-1 Users and Macro-Maxing Moms

By Elena Vasquez

Catalina Crunch reaches roughly 6 million to 7 million U.S. households, about 5% household penetration, and its new CMO Charlotte Mostaed intends to push that number higher with tailored messaging for cohorts she calls GLP-1 users and "macro-maxing moms."

Mostaed joined the better-for-you cereal and snack brand after marketing roles at Procter & Gamble, Pom Wonderful and Health-Ade Kombucha. Generous Brands acquired Health-Ade for $500 million during her five-year stint there as Chief Marketing Officer.

What is driving the brand's growth?

Catalina Crunch cereal has added 1.7 million households in the past 18 months, according to the brand. Mostaed said the company has posted consistent double-digit sales growth for the past few years. She credits wider distribution: the snacks now sit in 30,000 retail doors across grocery, mass merchants and club stores.

"That's very exciting for a marketer because the more people can find you, the better your marketing scales," she said.

Repeat purchases run at 47%, she said. A loyal core drives the business.

"We know that we have a tight cohort: 20% of our brand buyers are making up a predominant majority of our volume because they've fallen in love with our products," Mostaed said. She called that loyalty common for CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands and insufficient on its own.

"We need to win with our loyalists and continually delight them and bring in new trialists to introduce them to the brand in order to achieve our goals," she said.

How will the messaging change?

Mostaed plans to update packaging and marketing to spotlight the brand's value proposition: high protein, high fiber and low sugar. She wants the products to escape niche circles and lift sales velocity.

"We're seeing that in the cereal aisle, there are more and more opportunities for us to win over consumers and win them to the brand by highlighting our best-in-class macros," Mostaed said. "People just aren't aware, and brands do a great job of talking about their ingredients, and we could enhance our approach even better."

The brand will run a large awareness campaign in the new year, timed to when consumers reconsider their eating habits. Performance marketing on Pinterest and Reddit will support it with what she called deeper, more surgical targeting.

Fragmented media allows the brand to tailor messages by cohort. "Nowadays, you go after multiple benefit spaces with multiple cohorts to be able to reach them with the message that's going to resonate most," Mostaed said. "The GLP-1 user might be looking for something different than the macro-maxing mom."

Influencers will carry those subgroup messages, emphasizing protein per serving, gluten-free ingredients or satiety. Mostaed wants influencers who already know and like the brand, and will send them products prelaunch to gather feedback and buy-in.

"That kind of authenticity, the consumers can sniff it out nowadays because influencer marketing is so ubiquitous," she said. "It's not something that brands do behind the scenes anymore. It's out in front and consumers expect full disclosure."

How will success be measured?

Attribution is the hard part for a brand sold both in stores and online.

"It's not a one-for-one of, 'I run this piece of media and the next day I see a velocity increase,'" Mostaed said. "That attribution window is quite longer than anyone realizes, and it's about frequency and consistency of marketing."

She will track site visits, click-through rates, brand lift studies and Google search volume. The real test comes quarterly.

"What I want to see over time is that on a three-month basis, I've got a correlation between velocities and marketing spend," she said. "And that when we do something and when we heavy up and have a 360 approach to marketing, I'm seeing increasing velocities on the shelf."

What does Mostaed bring from her CPG career?

Her résumé spans Procter & Gamble, Pom Wonderful and Health-Ade. She said those roles taught her how to maximize a marketing budget, measure success and run a process that captures ideas in one place.

She frames her mandate as a test-and-learn exercise. "The marketing landscape is completely shifting under our feet at all times," Mostaed said. "The way that you go viral on TikTok now is probably not the way you went viral on TikTok three or four years ago."

Marketing, she noted, is one of the largest buckets of discretionary spend at any company. "That's a big responsibility I don't take lightly, is spending the company's money to reach new consumers and prove that's a worthwhile endeavor," she said. The new-year awareness campaign will offer the first public test of whether that spend moves shelf velocity.