In 2013 Skittles replaced their Lime flavor with Green Apple. Turns out this was a terrible idea. For over 9 years, lime-loving fans have bombarded the brand with complaints, and kept their "Bring Back Lime" campaign going strong. In 2022 we decided to finally bring back Lime flavor, and that provided the perfect opportunity to finally respond to and engage with these Lime fanatics.. Re-launching Lime in the most absurdly Skittles way - surfacing and using all that brand anger to show the passion people have for Lime.

9 years ago we took away Lime flavor and pissed off a lot of Skittles fans. To finally re-launch Lime flavored Skittles, we decided to use something pretty unusual for a brand - all the online anger and hate directed at us. After all, nothing shows the love for something like the anger when its taken away. So we literally apologized to everyone who ever complained – all 138,880 of them. Individually. Offering personal apologies live on Twitch, on Twitter, on billboards in Times Square and with a post listing every single personal we’d wronged that took over 10 hours to read. And not just an empty apology. We sent everyone free Lime Skittles. Re-launching Lime Skittles by acknowledging our mistake in the most absurdly personal corporate apology ever.

We analyzed 9-years-worth of social conversation to identify and then respond to all 130,880 plus individuals who had complained about the loss of lime. After gathering and auditing an initial pool of Lime Lover ID's, we gained their opt-in to receive a public apology from the brand. And to ensure our apologies felt as personal as possible, we segmented the complaints according to their theme, content, and tone, then versioned, targeted, and delivered our direct responses accordingly. We used data to find the people most angry at the brand, and then targeted them using the same channels they had used to hate on us, to create, tailor and deliver the most absurdly personal corporate apology ever.

We used the formats and 'formula' of the traditional Corporate Apology to execute the campaign -- mimicking where they appear, what they look like, and how they are (often poorly) conveyed.

We kicked off with a live press conference on Twitch, where 136,000 people watched us individually apologize to angry tweets for over 40 minutes. It was an opportunity not only to reach a gaming community who over-index for category consumption, but also to prove the authenticity (and absurdity) of the idea.

To keep the momentum going, we followed up with direct "apology" replies to Lime Lovers on social, in digital OOH ads, and with an open letter to every single one of them -- which took 11 hours to read. To provide proper restitution, we also offered free Skittles to everyone who had gone on record with their Lime Love (or green apple hate).

Highest Core Sales in the history of the brand

Double Digit growth ahead of the category (+21% for Skittles Core and +40% for Skittles Sours)

Search for Lime Skittles up 1000%

Twitter mentions up 400%

100% Positive / Neutral Sentiment