To address the ceaseless complaints of Skittles fans with the most in-depth corporate apology ever created, we identified and personally responded to everyone who had ever voiced their anger at us taking away Lime flavored Skittles. All 130,880 of them. We found and responded to hundreds of thousands of social complaints, and used them to show how much love there was for Lime. Using 9 years of online complaints to generate new conversation and positive brand sentiment.

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.

In 2013 Skittles took away the Lime flavored Skittles and replaced it with green apple. A lot of people complained - 130,880 of them to be exact. And they have continued to complain online for over 9 years. To announce that Lime was back, we decided to acknowledge these complaints, and make amends. But not simply by offering a boilerplate corporate apology and calling it a day. Skittles was going to apologize to every...single...one of them. Individually. We analyzed 9-years-worth of social conversation to identify everyone who had voiced their Lime Love (or green apple hatred). Then tailored our response to address those individual handles and their complaints directly. Instead of hiding or ignoring all that online anger, we used all that hate to show how much passion there was for Lime, and turned those hundreds of thousands of haters back to Skittles fans, one apology at a time.

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 analyzed 9-years-worth of social conversation to identify and then respond to all 130,880 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.

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