Branding is essential to any British company, which is why wise companies spend so much time and resources on professional logo design and marketing. Most companies know how important it is to get their logo out into the public eye and to help their consumer base associate the logo with the product. However, the British division of American cereal titan Kellogg’s might be taking this principle a little far.

Thanks to modern technology, logos can be placed almost anywhere, including on the tiny bits of fiber that we call cornflakes. Kellogg’s has announced that it is developing a new laser technology that will allow them to burn their logo design onto individual corn flakes, taking branding to an entirely new level. Customers soon may be staring into a sea of Kellogg’s designs every morning.

Why go to these lengths to mark your product and your logo design? With store brands encroaching on Kellogg’s market in the UK, the company is doing everything it can to differentiate its product from imitators. Because there are not a lot of ways to make a cornflake different in taste or texture, appearance seems like an obvious way of further branding the product. Although this doesn’t seem like a significant selling point, many customers may be willing to pay more for a bowl of logos. We already pay more for logos on a variety of other consumer products.

With a staggering 128 billion bowls of corn flakes consumed every year, this cereal seems like an obvious choice for experimentation. Perhaps branding via cereal imprints, while seeming outlandish now, will be the wave of the future. If the tests are successful, you can plan on seeing brand names on other Kellogg’s products in the UK, such as bran flakes and Special K.

However, there are drawbacks to this plan as well. First, many may be offended by the blatant commercialization of an otherwise wholesome product. People have become accustomed to seeing logos on billboards, packaging, and even clothing, but seeing branding on food itself will seem out of place and overly pushy, at least at first. Second, this type of technology surely has a cost, likely a very high one. Customers may actually be increasingly likely to turn to generics if they perceive Kellogg’s as overspending on brand labeling, especially if this technology drives up the price.

This branding move may be seen as daring and bold, or reckless and ridiculous. The key determinant will be the result. If Kellogg’s turns a logo bearing corn flake into a branding success story, you can bet that other companies will follow. Branded, logo design foods just may be the wave of the future, the next frontier of marketing. It should be noted that putting visible logos on clothing was once a similarly strange idea, yet most people now proudly display the logo design of their favorite designers. Brand imprinted food will be on the shelves soon; will you be one of the first to try it?