Essay On Skittles

Ryan Hand Professor Donovan ENG 01C 11 April 2024 “Taste the Rainbow” Ad Campaign Analysis (ROUGH DRAFT)

Imagine flipping TV channels, looking for something interesting to watch after a long day, and stumbling across an ad that actually intrigued you enough to keep watching. Many, if not most, video format ads fail to meet this standard, and the ones that do are typically outliers. That is not the case for Skittles “Taste the Rainbow” campaign, which prides itself on goofy skits, and a memorable catchphrase. The “Taste the Rainbow” campaign, which started in 1994, and continues to this day, has gained such notoriety due to TV ads that depict outlandish scenes that are uncanny, memorable, and stick to your head. By producing memorable advertising,

Before the “Taste the Rainbow” campaign, candy marketing was saturated with dull ads pitching flavor as the primary reason your kid should buy their candy. Skittles’ “Taste the Rainbow” realized that if they wanted to successfully convince children to buy their product, they needed to create ads that utilized a level of imagination parallel to that of a child or teen. One such example is Skittles’ “Sheep Boy” commercial. In this Commercial, two sheep with the face and brains of men are eating skittles off a stump, while nonchalantly describing how odd it is that Skittles is making fruit flavor combos with their new variety (Needs Citation). Skittles struck gold with this format of advertising because it was memorable, funny, and appealed to the humor and imagination of Skittles’ target consumer. Although “Taste the Rainbow” commercials don’t necessarily represent the experience of eating skittles, they convey a short, targeted representation of what their product should represent to children. Jennae Cohn explains this idea in her ‘Understanding Visual Rhetoric’ speech: “Rhetoric works both to scaffold our ideas for clearer understanding and to structure our critical examinations of both visual and verbal objects. . . Some audiences need visuals to think through an idea, and using graphs and diagrams can express ideas more clearly than text can. So, we

For example, after the two goats partake in eating their skittles, the commercial ends with “Blend the Rainbow, Taste the Rainbow”. Every Skittles ad in this campaign makes use of some form of the “Taste the Rainbow” slogan at the end of every commercial (NEEDS CITATION). Placing a slogan after a memorable ad allows Skittles to associate their product with that memorable wackiness. Consequently, children at the playground are more likely to proclaim that phrase to their friends when they eat skittles or do something wacky. To deliver these potent commercials to children, Skittles had to promote their ads where children consume video media. When this campaign started, Television networks like Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon were easy targets for Skittles to place their commercials. With the advent of social media and the smartphone, the advertising landscape has completely changed; all companies, including Skittles, now rely heavily on targeted online advertisements to promote their product. Jeffrey Rosen, author of “Who Do Online Advertisers Think You Are?” describes the nature of online marketing as very personal: “But the rise of independent media-buying firms has made it possible to identify the individuals most likely to be receptive to