Experience / Skittles participatory game encourages people to spend time with the brand while strengthening its association with fun and entertainment. Skittles has consistently linked itself with ‘fun’ to make its brand seem more human and relatable, which you can read more about in our brand spotlight here. Certainly, the mobile game is an extension of this but it also manages to cut through the brand noise around Chinese New Year and engage audiences with an activity. Awing Chen, executive creative director of DDB Guangzhou & Shanghai, summed it up like this: ‘Why would people spend time on advertisements at this time of year when there are so many other interesting things to do? We needed to let the brand speak in a very human way and interact with consumers in an engaging manner that offers a unique and fun experience.’
Premeditated campaigns / Although the public holiday is only officially a week-long (12 Feb – 18 Feb), Chinese New Year celebrations often last up to 16 days with millions of people travelling from the city to the countryside to be with their families. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, $149bn was spent on shopping, restaurants, and activities around Chinese New Year in 2019. Also, according to a 2019 survey by research firm iiMedia, 53.3% of respondents said that casual snacks are the most indispensable goods during the festival period. Given the opportunity here, Skittles has chosen to activate several weeks in advance of Chinese New Year to keep the brand top of mind leading up to the important sales period and consumption occasion.
Distinctive assets / Skittles has a history of activating during Chinese New Year: in 2019 the brand created a film featuring Chinese celebrity Yibo Wang engaging in a rap battle with his uncle who asks awkward and intimate questions about his personal life (which is common during the holiday period). In 2018, Skittles leveraged this same insight but positioned its packets of sweets as a solution to awkward personal questions. Each pouch included fun and humorous answers to questions such as ‘why are you single?’ or ‘when are you having children?’.
According to Byron Sharp in his book How Brands Grow, marketers need to create mental availability for their goods and reinforce memory structures through distinctive assets to grow their brands. Therefore, The Most Frustrating Red Packet is doubly effective for Skittles, as it reinforces its own distinctive red pouch while at the same time builds associations with the hongbao tradition which is at the centre of conversations around the holiday.
Game on / To increase engagement, awareness and loyalty, many a brand has launched apps and used gamification techniques (competition, scoring systems, and incentives) to appeal to its audience. Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen the efficacy of gamification time and time again. For example, Verizon Wireless boosted browsing time by 30% among half its users by using points and badges to gamify its website. And, Ford Motors increased sales by more than $8m and boosted Facebook likes by 600% with gamified content. Meanwhile, in Brazil, Fanta’s mobile game (that required people to shout the brand’s name into their phone to control the character) resulted in over 464,000 players continuously saying ‘Fanta’ for 290,000 minutes.
In short, by appealing to people’s love of rewards, levelling up and competition through gamification, Skittles can better engage its target audience, extend the interaction it has with the consumer and consequently be more likely to remain top-of-mind at a key consumption occasion.
