It’s back-to-school season and Neil Patrick Harris is in a 15-second spot for Walmart that uses Black Art.
The commercial features Neil dressed in a tuxedo. He takes a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (one of the best cereals out there, by some accounts), and slams it on the table, where it magically transforms into school supplies.
The effect is meant to hammer home the message that, if you buy box top goods at Walmart through September 17 (think cereal, cake mix, and snacks that come in, you guessed it, a box), you can raise double the money for your local school. How, you may ask? Through Box Tops for Education, a program that gives money to schools based on box top sales, as long as the purchasers create a Box Tops account and connect it to their Walmart account (assuming the purchaser also has a Walmart account or is willing to set one up).
The steps are many, and likely involve you sharing your sales data with both companies, but through mid-September, you’ll at least be getting your school double the cash through the program.