DDB Chicago | Skittles

Since Skittles swapped out the Lime flavor for Green Apple almost nine years ago, over 130,880 people have taken to the internet to complain. To make amends, DDB Chicago and Skittles announced that it would bring back the fan favorite Lime and apologize to every single person, through a live, 35 minute press conference on Twitch & TikTok.

To make amends with the 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.

Twitch was an unexpected platform. And in a world where we are in a constant battle for attention, the 35 minute livestream saw more than 136,000 unique viewers, a new benchmark for Mars. And the response from lime-lovers has been overwhelmingly positive, so apology accepted!

We saw Lime Skittles social mentions more than double vs. their previous year high, as the interest in our restaged core items continued to grow. On Twitter, specifically – Skittles’ most active community – total brand mentions also grew +400% in the campaign’s first week. Skittles even exceeded the benchmark in core item dollar sales and recorded the highest US core sales in the brand’s history.

The campaign received a Gold at the 2023 Effie’s US in Brand Content & Entertainment, a Global Gerety for Integrated Campaign in Humour, and two Golds at Cannes Lions for PR Launch and Entertainment.