While our key fruity competitors are chewed down quickly, Jolly Rancher is the long-lasting hard candy you keep on sucking. This functional benefit quickly inspired a big emotional idea.

Our target experiences sucky moments daily that a dumb joke and some candy can make better. To grab their attention, we created a gang of illustrated fruit characters with one message: #KeepOnSucking

Jolly Rancher doesn’t chase big platforms like the Super Bowl. We own everyday sucky scenarios like final exams, bad dates, Sunday anxiety, and Mondays at work.

Whenever sucky situations arise, the fruit gang are there. We committed to being true brand publishers, with daily emotional messaging on Instagram, functional product truths and extended fan engagement on Facebook, fast & frequent Twitter reactions, and weird FML gags on Snapchat.

All #KeepOnSucking social content is designed to connect with our fans in the everyday moments that matter to them.

A senior Art Director & Copywriter lead ideation, with assistance from a dedicated social creative team. A full-time illustrator hand-draws every concept, which is then scanned and either finished by the Art Director, or handed to a pair of in-house animators to bring our social videos to life.

While Jolly Rancher rallies around quarterly tentpole, cross-channel activations like Valentine’s Day (sucks) or Final Exams (really sucks,) we execute new ideas every day to precisely hit our consumers’ context & experience. Since the August 5th 2015 launch through March 31 2016, Jolly Rancher hit “post” 2,634 times across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and Vine with original animated & illustrated creative.

Below are PoP results from August 5, 2015, through March 31, 2016

• Sales: +12.5% lift in overall Hard Candy sales; +26% lift in sales of the top SKU (7oz bag)

• Reach impact: 315.8mm social impressions (+605%)

• Engagement impact: 3.4mm social engagements (+501%)

• Video impact: 13.88mm social video views (+385%)

• Unaided brand mentions: 382,055 (+22%)

• Website visits: 371,345 (+182%)