Skittles is about to make it rain.
The Wrigley-owned candy brand is set to award one Canadian consumer with one million Skittles. That’s 94 bulk cases of the candy, or about 5,500 of the full sized bags – enough to fill an average sized bedroom or a Volkswagen camper.
The promotion is part of the brand’s “Get Skittles Rich” campaign, created by BBDO Toronto, which riffs off pyramid schemes and the nouveau riche.
The campaign rewards consumers with “virtual Skittles” for sharing videos of the campaign’s fictional spokesperson, Danny Falcon. In one, Falcon floats in a pool full of Skittles. In another he pours them on his body like cash in a rap music video.
For every video consumers share that is viewed, they earn four virtual Skittles. If they send it to a friend who signs up for the program, they get eight virtual Skittles. For third-level connections, the initial sender gets six virtual Skittles, and so on.
As the “triangle shaped” business diagram Falcon holds in one campaign video says, the “Skittles flow up.”
Carlos Moreno, senior vice-president and executive creative director at BBDO Toronto, explained the idea behind the video is to make Skittles “the ultimate desire,” a consumer aspiration akin to piles of cash.
“The fact that we’re parodying the ‘get rich’ programs people are aware of will make this campaign resonate with consumers,” he said.
Dan Alvo, director at Wrigley Canada, added that the campaign is rooted in the concept of online popularity and the way consumers accumulate friends and followers on the social web.
“When you think about Facebook and how many friends you have, there is this kind of comparison that you may do,” Alvo said. “Of course, it’s the virtual world and kind of meaningless, yet we want to accumulate these things.”
“We’re playing off that same idea with this program. You can actually accumulate many millions of Skittles by sharing a video.”
The campaign is set to run for six weeks and is supported by a media buy by Mediacom, including Facebook ads, banner ads on mobile and a YouTube buy.
