The situation with branded content in the UK is that in the sweets category, no one is really leveraging its full potential. There is an over reliance on TV, when the audience is heavily online and totally 2.0. Skittles has been deploying the majority of its budget through digital channels for a number of years, amassing the biggest Facebook fan page in the confectionary category in the UK, with activities such as the Skittles Mega Super Status Updater.

We whet the fans’ appetite with footage from the Czech factory. We then announced that a special blue truck had set off. But then, the trucker stopped. We sent a film crew over there to find out why. It turns out the trucker was blue. He asked the fans to ‘like’ him or else. For a week, the fans tracked, ‘liked’ and interacted with him.The hub of the campaign was on Facebook, complemented by tweets from the trucker updating everyone on his mood. Once they landed in store, the packs announced the return of blue and further drove traffic back to our Facebook hub.

In just 7 days, the trucker received over 80,000 ‘likes’. In addition, half a million new fans liked our page. That’s 20% growth. The Blue Skittles sold out within 3 weeks, and after the campaign period, Skittles sales were up a huge 29%.