2017 Winners

Skittles has become a highly successful confectionery brand in Canada. But during the holidays, shoppers are surrounded by so many traditional candy options filling the store shelves and end-aisle displays that Skittles tends to lose share of mind.

In order to increase top-of-mind awareness during the holiday period, Skittles needed an idea that would not only compete against traditional holiday candy, but one that would cut through the clutter of all holiday advertising.

To gain attention during this highly cluttered period, the brand couldn’t simply use paid media. It needed to tie Skittles to a cultural idea that would gain attention as a news story relevant to that time of year, and would amplify its limited budget of $700,000 for media and production.

Working with BBDO, it found a universal cultural insight that the brand could build on.

People don’t always get what they want for the holidays. In fact, nearly 75% of Canadians have been disappointed by a bad holiday gift at one point in their lives. This inspired the idea to give Canadians the opportunity to trade those unwanted gifts for something they actually want: Skittles.

The team created a disruptive idea that would generate both high social engagement and buzz for the brand. The Skittles Holiday Pawn Shop – a pop-up in downtown Toronto – opened on Boxing Day 2015. For five days, thousands of customers brought in gifts and holiday items they didn’t want and traded them in for what they did. In the end, the brand traded more than 52,000 bags of Skittles for unwanted gifts.

To promote the shop, BBDO began by seeding an online film, followed by print and social influencers to help spread the message. There was even a website where visitors could have their items appraised in real-time, finding out how much they were worth in Skittles. Visitors who couldn’t make it to the physical store received a coupon with their appraisal, redeemable anywhere in Canada.

The Skittles Pawn Shop was promoted heavily to news outlets and became a national media story. It set aggressive targets for consumer engagement metrics and earned media goals and the Skittles Holiday Pawn Shop surpassed all of them.

In the end, there were 98.8 million earned media impressions (more than 394% over target), including coverage on Canada’s top five TV broadcasters (CTV, CBC, City, CP24, Global). There were 2,700 shop visits over 5 days (317% over target), 15,984 website submissions (85% over target), 51,798 site visits (20% over target), 4.4 million video views and 503,000 total engagements, with over 98% of comments, posts and mentions being favourable. The program also won a Bronze Cannes Lions in 2016.