Spooky Spokescandies A Halloween Hit For M&M’s

M&M's

For All Funkind

4.2

With spooky season in full swing the candy brands are releasing their Halloween ads. It’s a moment when the big name brands get to remind America how integral they are to Halloween, which itself has spread out across the entire month of October. We recently featured Reese’s seasonal ad in Ad Of The Week – now it’s the turn of M&M’s, whose 15-second Halloween special scored 4.2-Stars on Test Your Ad.

That’s a strong rating, but for once Star Rating might not be the most important factor in the commercial’s success. A Halloween ad isn’t an opportunity for brand-building alone. It’s also a moment when buyers are very much in the market, and brands want to raise their profile and their mental availability as much as possible to maximize their share of families’ candy spend. Spike Rating, the predictor of short-term sales impacts, is at its most important on specific occasions like this.

At the same time, it’s critical to try and make an emotional impact too and entertain for commercial gain – brands need to get into the spooky spirit of the holiday to cut through at a time when all their main competitors are in the market with largely identical messages. And since Halloween involves flirting with negative emotions like fear, brands need to be extra careful they land on the joyful, not the actually scary, side of the festivities.

This is one reason why having a fluent device, like the M&M’s spokescandies, is such an asset for Halloween. The candies communicate the brand at the same time as giving M&M’s the opportunity for narrative, action and jokes – and lots of them in a very short space of time. Also, using familiar characters neutralizes the fear problem. It’s hard to get too frightened of a bat when it’s terrorising the Orange M&M, or even to be scared at a knife when it’s wielded by the Brown M&M.

So how does the M&M’s ad perform on Spike? Exceptionally well, with a 1.43 Spike score putting it in the top bracket of ads – both joyful and highly recognizable. The Spokescandies once again prove there’s nothing to fear from owning and using a great Fluent Device.

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