We needed a creative idea that could break through the clutter of brand advertising on social media and get people talking about Skittles’ five flavors. To do this, we created five unique characters, each with their own favorite Skittles flavor.

After introducing our Skittles personalities to consumers, we asked them to communicate with them in real-time.

For Strawberry, we introduced the world to “Rodger,” and supplied them with his personal phone number. Fans could call him to chat about Strawberry Skittles and whatever else they desired.

For Grape, there was “Eunice,” an Xbox gaming grandma who was happy to connect through Twitch-- the world’s biggest gamer community-- as long as she wasn’t pulled away from her Madden NFL 16 game.

For Green Apple, there was “Donald,” who preferred a less high-tech means of communication: the fax machine. He responded to anyone who faxed him with personal drawings.

“Bryce” was our camp counsellor and designated Lemon Lover. He just wanted to be pen-pals with anyone who shared his fondness for Lemon Skittles.

And last was “Lisa”, our clairvoyant. She was an Orange aficionado who communicated with fans via telepathy.

In the end, results of the campaign showed that we effectively grabbed user’s attention, breaking through the clutter and generating lots of conversation. People were shocked that the characters were actually responsive one-to-one “IRL,” subsequently bragging about the interactions they experienced and daring friends to try it, too.

Across the five characters, we received over 100,000 interactions. This led to over 16.5 million impressions – 59% of which were earned as a result of consumers sharing, commenting and liking the content we published.

Action rates on both Facebook and Twitter exceeded all benchmarks. To be specific, the .89% action rate we achieved on Facebook surpassed the brand’s average of .53%. Same goes for Twitter, where the campaign earned an action rate of 10.48% vs. the previous average of 7.56%.