At 3.5 million strong, Skittles’ Facebook fan base was one of the largest of any brands on the web. The problem was that these fans were largely dormant. They were passionate about the Rainbow, but they weren’t engaging with the Skittles brand they loved. We were tasked to activate this Skittles fan base by adding additional fans and increasing communication between both fellow fans and the brand. The majority of our target was comprised of teens. They were always online and always looking for something fun and random to do. Simply consuming brand content was no longer enough for them. They wanted to be part of the creation process and have an active role in the brand conversation. With this growing Facebook fan page, there was literally a mob of Skittles fans ready and willing to engage with the Rainbow.

We created a Facebook campaign that sought to crowdsource the millions of Skittles fans and inspire them to take action by causing some random fun in both the digital and physical worlds. The campaign, or movement, called “Mob the Rainbow” was a year-long series of digital events. Our first mob event, “Valentine the Rainbow,” asked fans to shower an unsuspecting meter maid with love. The event lived on the Facebook tab, a Skittles event page, and Facebook ads, where fans could write personal Valentine messages to the meter maid. A Skittles Mob Boss profile encouraged fans to participate and kept them updated on future mob events.

Over 42,000 fans submitted Valentines, which were printed out and hand-delivered to the meter maid by a Skittles Cupid. The resulting viral video not only created buzz around the “Mob the Rainbow” initiative, but also helped increase the size of Skittles’ fan base by 700,000 fans. Skittles wall post quality also increased from 0.1 to 0.5. The power of this type of engagement was measureable by the heavy increase in comments, shared content, and media consumption by fans. This campaign took a largely dormant fan base and transformed it into an active Mob, capable of causing fun just about anywhere.