We created a real, epic Super Bowl ad, but only showed it to one single person.

Instead of yet another ad seeking the approval of millions, our Super Bowl commercial would be tailored to earn the love of only one – a real teenage Skittles fan from Canoga Park, CA named Marcos Menendez.

The idea came to life in three phases, each timed and engineered to steal the attention of existing Super Bowl conversations.

As other brands were unveiling their own traditional Super Bowl TV ads, we released an announcement film on social channels, sharing our ridiculous idea and introducing Marcos to the world.

As press built around the most Exclusive Super Bowl Ad ever, we released 4 baffling teaser ads featuring David Schwimmer, encouraging people to guess which was an actual scene from the Super Bowl Ad they would never get to see.

Finally, on Super Bowl Sunday, as ad conversation peaked, we live-streamed Marcos watching the ad on Facebook Live. They watched in real time as Marcos saw the surprise lengths we went to to customize the ad for him - a doppelganger lead actor, his Mom and best friend in the ad, even secretly filming a scene inside his house.

The campaign had clear business impact for the brand, driving a 7% lift in Skittles Originals instant-consumption dollar sales, over the course of its 5-week run.

It shattered our total impression goal (687 MM), delivering a full 1.5 billion earned impressions, and exceeding our specific earned reach goal by over 354%.

In fact, when compared to 2017 (when Skittles had an actual Super Bowl ad buy to drive the conversation…) our 2018 campaign exceeded earned media impressions in the lead-up to Game Day by over 10%.

Just as satisfying, in Business Insider/Amobee’s tracking of “the top 10 buzziest commercials of Super Bowl 2018,” our Skittles work drove the 6th- most digital content engagement of any brand– beating out several actual in-game Super Bowl advertisers outspending us by large amounts.

The Super Bowl is the most cluttered marketing environment of the year, with brands trying to outdo one another in their quest to be loved by everyone. But trying to appeal to 100 million people often forces advertisers to speak to the lowest common denominator. We threw out years of established marketing wisdom, and created an epic Super Bowl ad but only showed it to one single person. What could be more direct than that?

To achieve our objective, we knew Skittles couldn’t simply be entertaining, we had to be truly disruptive. Subverting the Super Bowl spectacle in a way that would shift the existing conversation and steal its spotlight.

One of the most interesting things to disrupt, we realized, was simply the scale of Super Bowl marketing itself – brands trying their hardest to win the affection of hundreds of millions of people at once.

To disrupt this predictable pattern, we decided, Skittles would not compete for the same 100 million+ audience everyone else was going for. In fact we would ignore them completely. Instead focusing all of our Super Bowl attention on one single person.

After three years of success as a Super Bowl advertiser, Skittles had grown fond of the massive amounts of attention that came with it – putting us top of mind during a key retail “drive” period for the brand.

But 2018 would be different. Skittles would no longer be buying an ad during the Big Game.

The resulting brief was simple, if anything but simple to achieve: Get Super Bowl-sized attention… without an actual in-game Super Bowl commercial.

The objective was 687 million total impressions. A high bar, considering the dozens of other brands spending ten times more than us to grab the attention of the same audience at the exact same moment. And, do it all without the traditional Super Bowl TV media the other brands were paying millions for.