Skittles Is All About the Freaky Faces

Each one shows 2 conflicting emotions

We can imagine the casting session…

“For our latest Skittles commercial, you’ve got to convey conflicting emotions—like, ‘joy’ and ‘horror’—on your face. Both at the same time. One emotion per side. Let’s see it. Not bad. But get your right eyebrow higher, and drop that left cheek.”

DDB Chicago’s intro for crunchy Skittles Pop’d freeze-dried candy finds actors interpreting such duality in spots that harken back to brand oddities of yore.

It’s a novel approach, to say the least, and in keeping with the mildly unsettling absurdity of Skittles classics like “Piñata.”

No stunt-faces required.

This feels like a throwback, subverting today’s “safer” marketing trends. One can imagine viewer complaints about the odd physicality of the approach. But that’s what makes this campaign a tad edgy, the kind of stuff that’s sure to get noticed and shared in a sea of commercial sameness.

“Change is hard,” says DDB CCO Colin Selikow. “Especially when it happens to something you love. So we didn’t fight that-we leaned in and made a campaign that helps you feel your feelings, even if they’re crunchy.”

Harold Einstein—always a great bet for broad comedy—directed.

“We knew we were looking for teens with exaggerated features they had decent control over,” agency GCD Katie Bero tells Muse. “It was a bit of a challenge because we needed their faces to show lots of movement to make sure the emotional conflict really came through. But their heads needed to stay completely still.”

“Some of the actors’ performances were probably just honest confusion about what they were being asked to do—and why they had a bunch of tracking marks all over their face,” she recalls. “There was also a lot of laughing at watching someone go so seamlessly from being extremely deceived to wiggling their eyebrows in extreme amusement.”

The Pop’d rollout also boasts a bevy of personalized microsites and custom digital experiences.