Whether you add them to a recipe or use them as a festive, colorful decoration on a tray of cookies, M&M’s are known to add life to a party–they really know how to have a good time. But can you say the same for yourself?
In a new campaign for M&M’s, BBDO New York suggests people can have more fun in their lives if they simply find their “inner M.”
Referring to past campaigns like “Chocolate is Better in Color” Susan Credle, executive creative director at BBDO New York, said that creatively they always had fun with the brand, but never owned fun. “This campaign is a shift to be more overtly into the emotional territory of what we want our brand to be,” Credle said. “Again I don’t think we haven’t been this all along, but we’ve never really taken that step to declare it.”
And she believes there is no time like the present. “Everybody is so busy and so hectic…nobody knows how to have fun anymore. So we decided, ‘Why don’t we be the champions and tell people it’s okay to have fun, to get in touch with that piece of yourself that is fun?’ We need to do this for the brand and the world needs the brand to do it.”
To help people get in touch with their playful side, BBDO tapped The Barbarian Group, Boston, to build an interactive Web site where people can make their very own “inner M” character–in other words, create caricatures of themselves as M&M’s. Visitors to BecomeAnMM.com will find the Character Creator, which leverages cutting-edge technology to deliver a user-friendly experience. The Character Creator provides access to a wide variety of M&M’s candy shapes, colors, hair, facial features and accessories, creating endless possibilities for combinations, ensuring users will be able to really personalize their “inner M” likeness.
Easy access With all of those creative options, it is remarkably fast and easy to use. “It was not easy to get there though, ” said Barbarian Group partner/COO Rick Webb with a laugh. Among the challenges: file size optimization, making sure the design of the site made the most sense to users and adapting to a different production process.
“We do a lot of 3D work and build a lot of 3D into Flash, but we’re used to building a scene or a character. Here we authored more than 500 little individual components,” he explained. We had to work in a totally different way than normal. Time estimates were way off, and the production process was totally different.”
Not only is there a huge selection of body parts and accessories on the site, they are available in tons of colors. The team, which used Maya for the 3D modeling, had to create a method to make it possible to apply different colors to a 3D item–a hat for example—as opposed to having individual red, blue or pink hats that have to be downloaded all at once. “Originally we thought we were going to be able to do it with colors individually before we figured out the way to apply the color in Flash, so we had to revise the process,” Webb explained. “The process was not really made for millions of small discreet parts, so that was kind of a learning experience. But it worked out well. It was a fun challenge for everyone.”
Upon exiting the Character Creator, visitors enter the world of Planet M&M’s, where they can play online games or enter a gallery and add their “Inner M” to photos and short movies, which can be shared electronically with family and friends, as well as enter “E-depot” for free downloads such as screensavers and e-cards. Over time, the goal is to create a virtual store that will offer visitors the chance to personalize items such as mugs.
“We really compared what we wanted to do with Planet M&M to Disneyland. We bought the land and now we have to start building the rides and keep at it–it’s not a finite site. It’s built to be able to expand and grow and evolve,” said Credle.
TV and print ads are driving people to the site. “I think we had a million hits after a week and the average time spent is 10 minutes. We weren’t like, ‘let’s see if people would discover this virally.’ We tell people it’s here.
“I see a lot of stuff on the Internet that is interesting but I don’t know how people get there beyond the people who are always on the Internet. I love the idea of viral and discovery but I think people are too busy and want to be told what they’re supposed to do and where they’re supposed to go. We tried to make it easy for everybody,” Credle said.
She points out that this endeavor did not begin as an online initiative, just a cool idea. She warns if you focus too much on the delivery medium you can do a disservice to the idea. “I think you have to come up with what you want to say and then you go, ‘Okay, we have an incredible amount of tools to say it with, where do we say it?'”
