For the Super Bowl, instead of following 50 years of established advertising wisdom, Skittles skipped the 30 second TV ad, and made a full 30-minute Broadway Musical.

We started by announcing our show like any good Broadway Musical would, with Times Square billboards and branded tour busses.

And like any Broadway musical we sold tickets. People spent over $200 to see an ad, and the show sold out in 72 hours.

As buzz built, we announced our show would feature real celebrity Michael C Hall.

Then, we released a music video of the title track ‘Advertising Ruins Everything.’

And the full original cast recording album on Spotify.

On Super Bowl Sunday we debuted our show to 1,500 people, along with invited press and influencers. We sold authentic souvenirs– T-shirts, posters, vinyl records. And like any genuine Broadway Show, we even created and sold bootleg shirts outside the theater.

The Super Bowl is seen as marketing’s biggest stage. Brands traditionally spend $5 million dollars for a 30 second TV ad and the 100 million eyeballs that come with it. We wanted to create even longer and more meaningful engagements without having to pay $5 million for a TV spot. So we created an entirely different stage.

On Super Bowl Sunday, while the whole country’s attention was focused on the game on TV, we put on a real Broadway Show. So could a musical ad on Broadway generate Super Bowl sized conversation without the Super Bowl sized spend? By creating a new stage for Super Bowl advertising, we ended up with over 2.5 billion earned impressions - over 25 X the viewership an ad receives on the big game. And more importantly, a 5.6% rise in Skittles consumption.