People love Skittles. But during the holidays, other, more traditional candy takes over. In order to increase top-of-mind awareness during this time, Skittles needed an idea that would not only compete against traditional holiday candy but one that would cut through the clutter of

all holiday advertising.

To do that, we sought to leverage a cultural insight around the holidays. We found insight that in attitudes about what they get under the tree.

While most people love the holidays, one thing they don’t always love is the gifts they receive. In fact, research showed that nearly 75% of Canadians have been disappointed by a bad holiday gift at one point in their lives.

Based on this insight, we gave Canadians the opportunity to trade those unwanted gifts for something they did want: Skittles!  That hideous sweater-vest is worth 12 packs of skittles.  Those strangely creepy oven mitts – 8 packs.  The Skittles Holiday Pawn Shop was born.

The Skittles Holiday Pawn Shop – a pop-up pawn shop in downtown Toronto - opened on Boxing Day 2015. For 5 days, thousands of customers brought in holiday items they didn’t want to trade for what they did – a grand total of over 3 million Skittles. All items collected were then donated to one of Canada’s largest charities, Goodwill.

The campaign earned 100 million free media impressions and generated incremental sales directly attributed to the program. Requests came in from around the world to bring the pawn shop to their city. It was one of Skittles most successful awareness campaigns, and after giving away over 3 million Skittles, their largest mass sampling program ever.