WOW #1 - David Schwimmer Skittles

Overview

DDB was thinking outside the "rainbow" with their newest SuperBowl ad for Skittles. Instead of a conventional 30 second Super Bowl ad, DDB has created four 15 second teasers for their "actual" commercial, all featuring David Schwimmer. In the 15 second teasers, David Schwimmer quite literally teases the audience by saying "You'd probably like to know if this is a scene from the Skittles Super Bowl commercial." Schwimmer then explains that no one is actually going to get to see the "real" Super Bowl commercial, other than a random 17 year old boy named Marcos Menendez. This unconventional ad is intended to create a sense of curiosity, and I believe it has. View the spots here:

After viewing the commercial and doing a little bit of outside research, I've come to these conclusions about

Target

Skittles' normal target demographic is from ages 35-54, which makes David Schwimmer's casting in this commercial very appropriate. While Schwimmer has had success recently with The People vs. O.J. Simpson: The American Crime Story, most people know him from the show Friends. Friends ran from 1994-2004, so now the biggest fans of Friends, are now in their target demographic.

Brand Idea/Positioning

In a market as dense as candy, it's hard to cut yourself some market share. Skittles owns hunger, Lindt owns decadence, York owns peppermint, and skittles has managed to carve out "fruity". Taste the rainbow is indicative of, if you'd like a fruity candy, Skittles is the way to go. In addition, their branding in recent years has been very "random". Everything happens in seemingly odd and often make-believe situations. So this series of teasers falls perfectly into their current branding of, weird, quirky, fun, and different.

Objective

To make viewers curious about Skittles, and generate interest in the brand overall. What are they doing? Who is Marcos Menendez? Why does he get to see the one true commercial? This can create so much hype around a brand on social media after its release, and that's fantastic for a brand in the later stages of the product development curve.

Strengths and Weaknesses

It's impressive that Skittles was able to come up with an idea that breaks convention like this. We've been discussing a lot in class that this is the kind of content we're looking for in marketing.

The weakness with this campaign is that I think a lot of people may dismiss it as "stupid". However, it seems that even twitter has thought of that, and is able to make fun of themselves on their own Twitter release of the video.