M&M’s Characters
“What marketer would name his most important product and character ‘Plain’?”
That’s what our client asked. Because for years before he came along, the two main M&M’s characters were known as “Plain” and “Peanut.” He asked me and my creative partner Susan Credle to create a troupe of characters based not on variety but on the brand’s key difference among chocolates: color.
Red is Ralph is Daffy is George is Don Quixote
We looked at other troupes in literature and popular culture and saw many common archetypes. We gave Red and Yellow an overhaul, and we created new characters to fill out the troupe. We also changed them from being perpetually sunny and perfect to being more flawed, more complex, more human.
Susan tells the story well here.
One sign of success is the growth of a lucrative licensing business that includes retail stores in Las Vegas, New York, London, and Shanghai. Another is that their Q Score – a measure of recall plus likeability – went from “Meh” to “Cool.”
My favorite M&M’s
commercials
M&M’s print ads
“For a candy factory,
this is a boring place”
That’s what the client said when they asked us for ways to make their workplaces here and overseas more in keeping with a fun brand. They did much of what we suggested:
• They installed “M&M’s crossing” signs at crosswalks in front of their factories around the world.
• At several facilities, they created a special reserved parking space for each of the characters (actually given to Employees of the Month).
• We commissioned a famous portrait painter to paint the characters like a law firm might honor its founders. Original paintings hang in the entryways of key facilities.
• Red and Yellow became the “operators” on the internal and external phonemail system.
M&M’s is too fun to be stuck with a traditional “logo lock-up”
We suggested that every time M&M’s tagline appeared, it should have a unique, crowdsourced design. This was a pretty new idea at the time (after Threadless, but before Kickstarter).
The idea was for some fans to upload designs, and for other fans to vote on the best ones. The most popular designs would appear at the end of commercials, on licensed apparel, and on network billboards (the slide you see when you hear, “The Simpsons... brought to you by M&M’s”).
“Great idea. Go for it.”
Sometimes, the best thing a creative director can do is simply to say, “Great idea. Go for it.”
That’s how this assignment went from a single page on the M&M’s website to a multi-media campaign with a comic book created with Marvel Comics and matching packaging, complete with codes to unlock new areas of an animated interactive version of the comic.
The copywriter even asked, “The site needs music, but we don’t have the budget. I make electronic music as a hobby. Can I create the music?”
“Great idea. Go for it.”
Want to see more?
Grab some popcorn and watch this compilation the Clios put together of the M&M’s ads done by BBDO. I was involved in all of them up to the 9-minute mark.