Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical

How they made it

Timeline of the creative process

Inspiration: You begin to ask ‘It’s great, but is it at the level of a Broadway musical?’ When you have that benchmark, you know you have something.

Workflow: It’s all about finding the right partners.

Results: Have no fear, find the right partners, and stay true to the authenticity of the idea.

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Inspiration

When you look at an event like the Super Bowl, you see amazing work but it all starts to fit a certain form. When we started to break that form is where things got really interesting.

What was your inspiration?

When you look at an event like the Super Bowl, you see amazing work, but it all starts to fit a certain form. When we started to break that form is where things got really interesting. In that space, doing a Broadway musical when everyone else was doing TV commercials was a logical step.

How did you approach this challenge?

There’s a period of throwing a lot of ideas at a creative problem. And as more ideas surface, and as we evaluate then, we generally find that certain ideas become the benchmark for all other ideas. You begin to ask ‘It’s great, but is it at the level of a Broadway musical?’ When you have that benchmark, you know you have something.

Workflow

Finding people who can take an idea, challenge you, make it better and execute to a crazy high level is probably the most vital part of bringing an idea to life.

How does your team work across capabilities and disciplines?

It’s all about finding the right partners. Finding people who can take an idea, challenge you, make it better and execute to a crazy high level is probably the most vital part of bringing an idea to life.

On Broadway the Rainbow we put together an incredible team: Our partners at SMUGGLER, including Producer Patrick Milling-Smith, playwright Will Eno, and the directors Sarah Benson and Randy Krallman, along with some amazing and very trusting clients.

It’s then just a matter of getting all those people together and letting them do what they do. It’s not always smooth, but it’s the friction of all those disparate creative minds that makes any idea better.

How does your approach adapt to the needs of a project?

There’s no real set process. Skittles as a brand is about disrupting the predictable, so it feels like having a set process would fall into being predictable, and that’s just not us.

Also, every year we try to do something that’s different to what we did before, and never has been done. So every year we have to adapt the process to a whole new thing. If there is any type of process it’s “try anything, everything, and break it until it’s perfect.”

Was there anything out-of-the-box about your approach for this project?

Other than creating a full Broadway musical Super Bowl ad about how advertising ruins everything that people bought tickets for, no.

How do you digitally manage your projects?

We try to connect as much as possible. Over video, calls, shared docs. Anything that allows us to get people talking about the work as much as possible.

How is the pandemic and remote working impacting your team?

Collaboration is key with any creative endeavor. It’s a little more challenging now, but switching to video has been pretty seamless.

Even before this craziness, we worked with partners across disciplines and geographies, and we often had to connect remotely. So this doesn’t feel that unusual.

Results

But in a world that is increasingly digital, this type of recognition means a little more.

Any advice for creative teams looking to make great digital work?

Have no fear, find the right partners, and stay true to the authenticity of the idea. It’s easy to compromise but it always shows.

What does being named "best of the Internet" mean to you?

It’s always nice to be recognized. But in a world that is increasingly digital, this type of recognition means a little more. It means we are creating ideas that connect with our audience where they are, in ways that reflect how they live their lives.