Kellogg Canada is stealthily launching a new honey-flavored cereal that cashes in on the equity of one of its most popular brands.

Honey Rice Krispies ­ the rice grain cereal ‘with a hint of honey’ ­ has just been shipped out to grocery stores across the country. A tv campaign is to start in August with billboards to follow sometime this fall.

Despite the fact that the brand, which was test-marketed in Quebec and the Maritimes before a national rollout this month, can now be purchased by anyone with about $3 and change for a 350-gram box, the Etobicoke, Ont.-based company is keeping very tight-lipped about it.

The reticence in revealing marketing plans is unsurprising in the highly-competitive ready-to-eat cereal category, which reported sales in this country of $720 million in the year ended June 21, according to ACNielsen.

However, it is known that Kellog ad agency Leo Burnett has put together three spots (two 15-second and one 30-second) which leverage the strength of the Snap, Crackle and Pop characters.

In the spots, the little guys are being chased by honey bees. Three sequential billboards, to debut this fall, also play up the bee theme, with the characters popping up over the top of the boards. In-store promotions will also run throughout the summer and into the fall.

Meanwhile, Citytv’s Breakfast Television ran a ‘Buzz Crawl Promotion’ earlier this month wherein viewers were asked to call when they spotted Snap, Crackle and Pop running across the bottom of the screen. A trip to Florida was offered as the grand prize.

Sweetening cereals with honey ­ on top of sugar (and its variations ‘glucose’ and ‘fructose’) ­ seems to be a popular trend in breakfast cereals.

Last fall, Kellogg’s u.s. parent launched Honey Crunch Corn Flakes with much fanfare (it being the first time the Corn Flakes brand and its character, Cornelius the rooster, had been extended in that country).

The Canadian company, meanwhile, has had Honey Nut Corn Flakes ­ a completely different product ­ on the market since 1981 (advertising handled by J. Walter Thompson). Honey Crunch has not been introduced in Canada.

Clearly, Kellogg is not averse to taking on General Mills’ honey-flavored cereal Honey Nut Cheerios, which splits its time between the No. 2 and No. 3 position (after Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and either before or after Rice Krispies, depending on the study) in the ready-to-eat category.

A spokesperson from Kellogg says that the most recent kilogram shares numbers from ACNielsen indicate the General Mills product ranked third with a 5.7 share against a 6.4 share for Rice Krispies.

Corn Flakes, meanwhile, enjoyed a 8.6 kilo share in 1996, according to the same spokesperson.