9 years after Skittles removed its lime flavor, we brought it back by creating the most absurdly personal corporate apology in history, turning hundreds-of-thousands of deeply negative complaints into irresistibly entertaining content.

Performance of Skittles’ core items was not keeping pace with a growing fruity confections category.

These core items represented nearly 2/3 of the brand’s total dollar volume, but their relative lack of momentum was leading to losses in distribution and visibility. And in a category dominated by a constant stream of new textures, formats, flavors, and innovations, our un-changed, “original” Skittles offering was easier than ever to forget.

We needed an idea that would not only remind people of this core product, but make it worthy of attention (and eating!) – creating enough “news” out of the classic Skittles experience to make it a salient option once again.

Objectives:

1. Drive a 5% lift in $ sales for Skittles core items

2. Drive a 12% lift in velocity (i.e., units sold per store)

3. Earn 100% positive/neutral sentiment in coverage

4. Drive 2x (100%) increase in Lime Skittles social mentions

While many people had largely lost interest in the core Skittles proposition, we knew one group had been obsessed with it for nearly a decade.

In 2013, Skittles had swapped out its lime flavor for green apple, and in the 9 years since, a remarkably persistent and disgruntled subculture of consumers had been clamoring for its return. They had logged 11,000+ complaints with Mars Wrigley, and averaged 47 mentions of lime on our social media channels every day... FOR NINE YEARS STRAIGHT.

They represented the most visible interest and engagement around the core Skittles product, even as they were actively “hating” on it.

If we could find a way to positively harness their “negative” passion, we realized, we could use it to regain the attention of the masses. It meant embracing an uncomfortable truth: our most passionate core Skittles fans were actually our most thoroughly-disgruntled consumers.

To rekindle the core Skittles love, we decided, we would acknowledge the flavor-change hate, and finally give Lime Lovers what they had been clamoring for. In 2022, we would restage core Skittles, to bring back Lime for good.

And to bring maximum attention and authenticity to this restage, we decided to embrace the over-the-top angst of our lime-loving fans. Instead of shying away from their criticism, we would lean into it, and offer an apology.

But instead of the shallow corporate mea-culpa that culture had come to expect, we would flip the script entirely with a classically ridiculous Skittles idea: individually apologizing to every single person who complained about us taking lime away... all 130,880 of them. With this absurdly personal display of remorse, we would re-write the Corporate Apology playbook, and get our audiences to take notice.

To bring the idea to life, we messed with the tropes and trappings of the standard Corporate Apology.

Instead of a boilerplate statement of shallow corporate contrition, we launched with a 35-minute press conference of gloriously awkward apologies to individual lime lover complaints.

We teased the announcement with :15 paid media across OLV and social channels, and live-streamed it on Twitch & TikTok.

To make amends with the rest of the 130,000+ lime-lovers, we individually apologized to each of them on social media. And continued to acknowledge their angst and communicate our remorse as publicly as possible–with apologies in Times Square, in print ads, and via an open letter more than 16 feet in length, calling out every last person who had complained, by name.

Finally, to compensate lime-lovers for their pain and suffering, we also created a microsite where they could claim their own pack of “Apology Skittles.”

7.4% lift in $ sales for Skittles core items, YoY

Skittles exceeded its objective in core item dollar sales and recorded the highest US core sales in the brand’s history.

+14.9% YoY lift in units of core Skittles items, per point of distribution

Velocity growth of core Skittles items outpaced both the total Skittles franchise (+12.4%) and was more than 2x the rate of growth for the Fruity Confections category as a whole (+6.2%)

100% positive/neutral sentiment in coverage

The program drove 28MM earned impressions and over 40 earned media placements, including two features in Fast Company, who called the campaign "pretty close to a masterpiece."

162% increase in Lime Skittles social mentions, YoY

Mentions more than doubled vs. their previous year high, as the interest in our restaged core items continued to grow. On Twitter, total brand mentions grew +400% in the campaign’s first week.