CHALLENGE

How do we tie in Skittles with the holiday season?

Skittles has a long history of disrupting culture – from giving up its own rainbow for pride to running ads for the Super Bowl about how they’re not running ads on the Super Bowl. Our goal was to disrupt the holiday season. We wanted to take a predictable behaviour and put a new spin on it in order to drive top of mind awareness for the Skittles brand.

INSIGHT

Reward last minute shoppers with last minute Skittles gifts.

People leave their holiday shopping until the last minute. They know better, but they just can’t help themselves. We set out to help those last minute shoppers. But instead of providing last minute shoppers with a practical solution, we decided to help by creating a totally impractical solution – in true Skittles fashion.

PLAN

The Skittles Last Minute Gift Shop. Doors open at 11:59 pm. On Christmas Eve.

This year Skittles opened The Skittles Last Minute Gift Shop – a pop-up store that rewarded last minute holiday shoppers with free Skittles themed gifts. Staying true to the brand’s irreverent sensibilities, we made sure the Last Minute Gift Shop only opened its doors at 11:59 pm on Christmas Eve (the literal last minute). In addition to the physical location, we also opened a Last Minute Gift Shop online. It was open from 11:59 pm until 12:00 am – for exactly one minute.

We teased the campaign in social and online with a time eating elf. His predicament got worse the closer it got Christmas Eve.

RESULTS

Over 25,000 people visited. As usual, procrastination pays off.

Hundreds lined up at 11:59 pm on Christmas Eve at the downtown pop-up shop (including entire families). A combined total of over 25,000 people visited the physical and online stores. We sold out of all our gifts. And, of course, the pop-up shop received both national and local news coverage, helping us garner over 42 million impressions in just two weeks (on a media spend of just over $300,000).

MediaCom and Harbringer PR helped us pull it off.

Case URL http://www.lookwhatwemade.ca/SkittlesHolidayStore/