Trolli is America’s favorite sour gummie worm. And gamers eat a lot of sour candy. So, we needed to connect hungry gamers to the Trolli Universe.

True Trolli fans have a defining set of psychographic characteristics. They’re offbeat. They unabashedly create their own culture.

So, our challenge was to disrupt our target audience’s journey. We needed to drive sales and make Trolli the go-to brand for gaming. But gamers are savvy. So we had to create something authentic.

To get our worms eaten by gamers, we sent them to the darkest, most tech-centric place of all—The dark web. We created a hidden video game called The Deliciously Dark Escape. And we made it really hard to find.

The game could only be accessed by scanning our pack. Fans couldn’t share URLs. The site was unlisted. The only way to find it was by eating Trolli or by using an anonymizing browser.

Trolli has always been known for its dark humor, but traditionally relied on co-sponsored innovation to make waves. So to stand out on its own and invigorate its core products, Trolli moved from being just Weirdly Awesome, to a more purposeful, active, mischievous and fantastical Neon Light in the Darkness.

The core demographic is Gen-Z but true loyalists have a defining set of psychographic characteristics. They’re offbeat. They unabashedly create their own culture by pushing boundaries and trying new things without worry. They’re intriguing, irreverent, and never overly serious. They look to escape the ordinary.

Trolli has plenty of super fans; turns out, most are gamers. But, when it comes to snacks that pair with their online battles—there are a lot of options. So, our challenge was to disrupt our target audience’s journey. We needed to drive a sales lift and make Trolli the go-to brand for gaming.

Trolli loyalists are video game enthusiasts—always exploring new worlds. But, the brand still hadn’t bridged the gap into gaming. Gamers are essential to Trolli; as these young stewards were defining a lucrative, uncaptured wave of what would be a culturally impactful market.

To get gamers to eat our worms, we sent them to the darkest, most tech-centric place we could think of—The dark web. We created a hidden 5-level video game called The Deliciously Dark Escape that was next to impossible to find.

This was not your typical branded game. We connected Trolli’s Neon Light in the Darkness platform to our creative experience; making sure to maintain Trolli’s dark sense of humor within our design. If gamers made a mistake, time was taken off the clock. This kept fans coming back. Because no gamer likes to leave a game unbeaten. Each scan was a new chance to explore and win.

Most notably—The Deliciously Dark Escape made a significant impact in connecting Trolli with gamers. This tech-savvy fanbase didn’t just log on and mess around for a few seconds or even minutes. They were excited to explore our world. And they kept coming back for more chances to win.

We know this because the average time engaging with our game was 8:59 minutes! That’s three times the industry standard and nine times more than users spent on Trolli.com

We connected to a whole new audience with pageviews up 5.4x the benchmark of Trolli.com and pack scans 103% above goal. The brand even saw an 18% sales lift during the campaign as well as an 18.7% growth vs the prior year.