Living The Rainbow

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Sheep with human faces, a teenage boy with blender-hands and tree-munching lumberjacks—these are just a few of the outrageous characters featured in a campaign of eight Skittles TV spots that have aired since July 2004 and recently won the agency that created the imaginative campaign, TBWA\ Chiat\Day in New York, a Bronze Lion at the 52nd International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France.

The spots are bizarre and attention-getting, but have they enticed teenagers to “Experience the rainbow,” as the campaign suggests?

Background

For a decade, Masterfoods USA relied on the tagline “Taste the rainbow” and commercials featuring magical fantasy worlds inhabited by mystical wizards and the like to sell Skittles to teenagers, a strategy conjured up by the now-defunct D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Skittles’ agency from the brand’s launch 20 years ago until 2002, when the New York agency closed its doors.





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