General Mills and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) announced today that General Mills has transferred its official cereal designation to its leading cereal brand, Cheerios, and will continue to sponsor three of the LPGA’s top players, Lorie Kane, Cristie Kerr and Janice Moodie, throughout the 2001 season.
Other brands in the Cheerios family will also be involved with the LPGA, including Multi-Grain Cheerios, which will feature Kane, Kerr and Moodie on individual packages this summer. The sponsorship is an expansion of the partnership that General Mills and its Multi-Grain Cheerios brand formed with the LPGA last season.
‘The addition of Cheerios to the LPGA’s roster of leading brands validates the growing popularity of the LPGA and the sport of women’s golf,’ said Ty M. Votaw, LPGA commissioner. ‘We are very excited about entering into this new relationship with Cheerios. By adding the power of the Cheerios brand to the LPGA sponsor family, we will leverage the strength of both the Cheerios and LPGA brands as we move forward.’
‘Our relationship with the LPGA last season proved to be a mutually beneficial affiliation for both organizations,’ said Greg Zimprich, spokesperson for Cheerios. ‘We wanted to expand our association with the LPGA this season and we feel that by including America’s number-one selling cereal, we can create a platform that provides great opportunities.’
As part of the announcement, Multi-Grain Cheerios also made a $102,000 donation to the American Heart Association (AHA) on behalf of the efforts of Kane, Kerr and Moodie, as well as LPGA fans last season. Every birdie carded by the three players earned $250 for the AHA’s ‘Take Wellness to Heart’ program, which is dedicated to education about and research into women’s heart disease and stroke. An additional donation was raised by the more than 6,000 fans who visited the Multi-Grain Cheerios tent at LPGA Tour stops throughout the country last season and participated in the ‘Putt for Your Heart,’ where all made putts resulted in a donation of 50 cents to the AHA.
Contact:
Connie Wilson, LPGA
Tel: +1 386.274.6271
Roman Blahoski, General Mills
Tel: +1 763.764.3699