ABOUT

We created a real, epic Super Bowl ad, but only showed it to one single person. Instead of yet another ad seeking the approval of millions, our Super Bowl commercial would be tailored to earn the love of only one – a real teenage Skittles fan from Canoga Park, CA named Marcos Menendez.

To achieve our objective, we knew Skittles couldn’t simply be entertaining, we had to be truly disruptive. Subverting the Super Bowl spectacle in a way that would shift the existing conversation and steal its spotlight. One of the most interesting things to disrupt, we realized, was simply the scale of Super Bowl marketing itself – brands trying their hardest to win the affection of hundreds of millions of people at once. To disrupt this predictable pattern, we decided, Skittles would not compete for the same 100 million+ audience everyone else was going for. In fact we would ignore them completely. Instead focusing all of our Super Bowl attention on one single person.

The idea came to life in three phases, each timed and engineered to steal the attention of existing Super Bowl conversations. As other brands were unveiling their own traditional Super Bowl TV ads, we released an announcement film on social channels, sharing our ridiculous idea and introducing Marcos to the world. As press built around the most Exclusive Super Bowl Ad ever, we released 4 baffling teaser ads featuring David Schwimmer, encouraging people to guess which was an actual scene from the Super Bowl Ad they would never get to see. Finally, on Super Bowl Sunday, as ad conversation peaked, we live-streamed Marcos watching the ad on Facebook Live. They watched in real time as Marcos saw the surprise lengths we went to to customize the ad for him - a doppelganger lead actor, his Mom and best friend in the ad, even secretly filming a scene inside his house.