We partnered with producer Zedd and vocalist Aloe Blacc to reimagine Sammy Davis Jr.’s classic The Candy Man for a younger audience. We gave them the reins to rewrite and restructure the original song, to which M&M’S holds the exclusive rights. The result was a track that combined Sammy’s old soul, Zedd’s modern rhythm and Aloe’s smooth tone to create an entirely original song unique to M&M’S history and message: Candyman. We built a full-length music video around the new song, featuring 75 years of historic brand footage along with the artists performing. To further engage audiences, we built Remix With M: a social web platform that allows fans of Candyman to remix the song using real M&M’S. The song became the brand’s new anthem, setting the tone for their communication throughout the year.

Aloe and Zedd took two months to fully produce and execute the track. The partnership between the artists and the brand was teased for two weeks via 15-second pieces of content on TV and the web starting during the Grammy’s. The Candyman track was first released on Zedd’s SoundCloud page to his loyal and socially active followers, then to all major platforms 24 hours later on New Music Friday. Press coverage and social media sharing of the track resulted in a quick organic following. We released the branded music video and Remix With M platform online a few days later and launched a mass-reach TV campaign comprised of 60-second, 30-second and 15-second cut downs of the music video.

The entire Candyman campaign created a groundswell of support from longtime fans of the brand and entirely new audiences. The song reached #39 on the iTunes top 100, #4 on the Spotify Viral chart and has been downloaded and streamed over 8.5MM times (as of 4/12/16). It became part of pop culture, fueling endless Twitter conversations, being featured as the NCAA’s Final Four theme song on CBS, and filling the coveted role of Zedd’s closing song during his headline set at Ultra Music Festival in Miami to a sea of nearly 200,000 music fans. The music video has been viewed over 18MM times (as of 4/12/16). Candyman has bridged M&M’S last 75 years with its next 75 years by successfully inspiring the next generation of the brand’s loyal fans.