Cannes Winner: Gold Lion in Social & Influencer Lions, Cannes 2018
Summary
Marcos Menendez, a real-life resident of Canoga Park, California and a huge Skittles fan was selected by the brand for their Super Bowl campaign. The campaign focused on the brand rather than Super Bowl. The television commercial was showed only to Marcos rather than grabbing the attention of the 1 million Super Bowl fans unlike the other ads, making Marcos the ultimate influencer and brand ambassador for Skittles.
Objective
The objective of the campaign was to get noticed and arouse curiosity amongst viewers. Sometimes, what we cannot see is more interesting than what we can see - tapping on this, DDB Chicago conceptualised the campaign to make a Super Bowl ad but not on the Super Bowl.
Execution
As a part of the campaign, a television commercial was released three weeks prior to the actual release of the exclusive ad for Marcos. In the ad, Skittles announced that this year they will make a Super Bowl ad for only one viewer, which will be seen only by that one Skittles superfan.
A week later, they released four baffling videos starring David Schwimmer. Each video had the actor asking himself, "Is this the scene from the new Skittles ad which is going to be shown to only one person?" generating curiosity around the campaign.
Then on February 04 i.e. the Super Bowl Sunday, the exclusive ad was shown to Marcos. And the million viewers across the world watched how Marcos reacted to the ad via Facebook Live.
The day started with Marcos being taken to an isolated warehouse in a bus. After that, he was taken to a four-walled artificial chamber built only for him to watch the exclusive commercial. After the Facebook Live, Marcos was asked to answer some of the questions contributed by the users who saw the Facebook live. Here are a few of them:
Q. Can you tell us what was the commercial like?
A. It had David Schwimmer in it. He played the character from the fourth teaser where he had a boy-hairstyle, glowing eyes and emitted rays out of his mouth. He would shoot people with it and they would just turn into a bag of Skittles.
Q. Was this ad at all like the Skittles ads, all Skittles ads like the Pinata Man and the Skittles Pox?
A. No, this was the best commercial I have ever seen, not just the best Skittles commercial but the best commercial ever.
Q. What made it the best commercial ever?
A. This commercial is very close to home. Infact, some parts of the commercial are actually shot in my home, to be precise in the dining room of my home of Canoga Park. It came as a shock to me when I realized that David Schwimmer was actually at my place, in my home.
Q. Skittles commercials are considered weird. What was the weird part of this one?
A. It has to be hands-down only one thing, my mom was in the commercial. In the commercial, she was seen riding a bus and casting nasty looks on David Schwimmer when all of a sudden she is turned into a Skittles bag by the rays emitted by the eyes of David Schwimmer.
Q. The whole exclusive commercial thing is a fake marketing stunt by Skittles, isn't it?
A. Many people on Instagram and Facebook and even Twitter asked me if it is fake. But knowing Skittles, this is the most real thing for me. The commercial and everything was real and it was not a marketing stunt at all.
Unknown to Marcos himself, the commercial featured his mother and his best friend alongwith David Schwimmer, to add to that the entire commercial was shot in his hometown of Canoga Park with some parts of it shot in his own family home. The agency created a doppleganger to feature in the exclusive commercial to give it an aesthetic touch and let Marcos feel the magic of 'Marcos the Rainbow, Taste the Rainbow!'
Results
The campaign, Exclusive the Rainbow, Taste the Rainbow's sole objective was to get noticed and it achieved that. It got a considerable coverage in ABC's morning segment, Good Morning America. In addition to this, it received 1.5 billion media impressions and it was the most talked Skittles ad of all time. The campaign made it out to the best Super Bowl ads of all time too.
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