How Skittles’ Pride Campaign Aims to Build a Legacy Beyond the Parade

Last week a video from comedian Meg Stalter went viral on Twitter. Entitled “Corporations on July 1st,” it featured Stalter playing a boss and delivering satirical lines such as: “It is officially July 1st… no more gay stuff.” Stalter’s comedy resonated because it mocked a trend that becomes all too apparent during every Pride month: for all the rainbow-colored posts and ad campaigns from brands, their gestures of support for the LGBTQ+ community are often fleeting and empty. With this in mind, Skittles decided to do something different to celebrate Pride this year. The Mars brand began marking the event in 2016, when it issued an open letter to Pride in London that declared it was giving up its signature rainbow, because “only one rainbow deserves to be the centre of attention—yours.” Skittles’ Pride initiatives, including taking the rainbow off its packs, have continued every year since, but this latest effort aims to have a more long-lasting impact. “As we’ve been evolving the campaign, we’ve been thinking about how it can last more than a few months beyond the parades. We wanted to have a legacy that would last for a longer period of time,” Victoria Gell, portfolio director at Mars Wrigley, told Adweek. So Skittles’ “Recolor the Rainbow” campaign was born. Created by Adam & Eve/DDB and DDB Chicago, the ads recolor black-and-white photos of key LGBTQ+ milestones–metaphorically lending the Skittles rainbow to bring greater visibility to the community. The brand is also asking LGBTQ+ people to submit their own photos for recolorization and help build an archive for an underrepresented part of history. “We felt we had to do something quite profound after last year [when Pride marches were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic],” Richard Brim, chief creative officer of Adam & Eve/DDB, said. “The creatives were getting loads of references in and found some amazing images from Prides gone by. It felt very strange seeing these images of Pride that weren’t in full color. “It was one of those ideas so simple and obvious that we were like, 'why haven’t we done this before?'” The agency called on colorization specialists at Dynamichrome to restore a selection of photographs to full color for the first time. But before they even got to that stage, they had to do their research. First, Adam & Eve/DDB had to find photos to recolor, but the problem is “LGBT imagery isn’t that well archived,” Janki Shah, an account manager at the agency, explained. Over the course of five months, the team enlisted a researcher and partnered with Gay Times Group and libraries such as Getty to source images. In many cases, even after finding images, they struggled to find the people pictured and obtain usage rights. Shah pointed out that because some of the photos were taken during the AIDS crisis, a lot of the people in them had passed away. “There were some amazing images that fell by the wayside because we don’t know who the people are,” Brim said. “This has been a project where we had a lot of no's, but through the sheer tenacity of the team, we thought there must be a way around this. There are certain projects you work on that are so satisfying because at every single step it shouldn’t have happened.” Amid this enormous task, the agency made a serendipitous discovery: a photo of a 1985 Lesbian Strength March, led by a smiling woman in a dress. Adam & Eve/DDB found the woman, who turned out to be activist Femi Otitoju. She remembered the color of the dress she wore that day, which in the Skittles ad has been restored to its original shade of pink. Activist Femi Otitoju, pictured, made her dress for the 1985 parade. “She had a story about how she had made this dress and it was a very specific shade of pink, and how that’s what she remembered so vividly about that day,” Brim recalled. “It was one of those moments that happen so rarely where all the stars aligned.” Otitoju became one of the faces of the Skittles campaign, sharing her personal story of activism through a content partnership with Gay Times. Besides the image featuring Otitoju, Skittles also recolored photos from a 1971 Gay Liberation protest in London’s Trafalgar Square and Pride events in New York City during the 1970s. But to really make an impact with this project, it was clear to Skittles and the agencies that their efforts couldn’t stop with the recolored photos. Recognizing that LGBTQ+ people have often been overlooked in history, the brand joined forces with Queer Britain, a charity that is setting up the U.K.’s first LGBTQ+ museum. The images from the Skittles ads will be part of Queer Britain’s archive, and the campaign is also calling on the community to submit their own photos which will be recolored and added to the collection. “That’s when it starts to get exciting–we don’t know what’s out there. We’re hoping someone sees this [campaign] and goes, I’ve got this,” Brim explained. “It’s a deeper commitment. What we’re giving back to the museum is profound and from the community.” The campaign is also partnering with LGBTQ+ helpline Switchboard and Gay Times, which is hosting an online hub with content including an intergenerational video series featuring people from the images, such as Otitoju, speaking with younger LGBTQ+ people. “It felt important to connect a generation from back then who really fought for LGBTQ+ rights with a younger generation,” Gell said. “This campaign is drawing attention to the importance of reflecting on the past and LGBTQ+ history, but it’s also about putting a foot forward to a better future. The reason we want to be an advocate for the community is because we believe that through greater visibility, we can also help drive acceptance.” Skittles’ campaign will continue throughout the summer and into September, when Pride in London’s parade takes place. But the stories it makes visible will hopefully live on for much longer, Gell added. Throughout this process, the team has been guided by a principle that has implications for other brands trying to engage with social causes and diverse communities: “Our most sacred symbol isn’t as important as this moment or your cause–that always helps us stay on track,” David Mortimer, planning director at Adam & Eve/DDB, said. “If we are the ones who feel the most important in what we’re doing, then we’re doing it wrong.” Skittles Goes Colorless, Giving Up the Rainbow for LGBTQ Pride Partnership with GLAAD