Skittles, the purveyor of colorful candies and quirky commercials, is taking a strong-arm approach in its first-ever Super Bowl ad.
A teaser video released Thursday features townspeople with enormous right arms, a call to action and the tag line, "It Will Be Settled." What happens next will have to wait for Super Bowl Sunday.
"It's all about entertaining the viewers and the Skittles fans, and doing that in a humorous way," said Matt Montei, senior marketing director at Chicago-based Wrigley, which owns the Skittles brand.
The spot from DDB Chicago continues an offbeat advertising approach that has helped build a large social media following and create a string of viral videos for Skittles.
Last year's Cloud spot, where an elderly woman walks a pet cloud that rains Skittles, has more than 17 million views on YouTube.
NBC is charging a reported $4.5 million per 30-second spot in Super Bowl XLIX, which will be played Feb. 1 in Glendale, Ariz. Skittles will run one commercial during the first half of the game. Skittles' hope, of course, is the commercial will get a lot of traction online, long after the game.
"You can never predict what will happen in the social space," Montei said. "We start with really strong creative that we plan to air on TV and then we try to extend the conversation online and on YouTube."
Skittles spent $19.8 million on TV advertising during the first nine months of 2014, up more than 50 percent from the previous year, according to Kantar Media.
The decision to tease but not fully release the ad is calculated to build buzz for Skittles, which is milking its initial foray into the Super Bowl for all its worth. The marketing effort kicked off with a tailgate party from the site of the Super Bowl four weeks before the game. The event included former Super Bowl MVP quarterback Kurt Warner in a hot tub filled with Skittles.
The brand is also looking to get some mileage out of a unique marketing relationship with the Seattle Seahawks star running back Marshawn Lynch, who grew up popping the colorful candies as game fuel. Lynch continued his sideline Skittles snacking in the NFL, and last year was made an official spokesman by the brand.
When the Seahawks made it to Super Bowl 2014, Skittles celebrated with a limited edition Seattle Mix.
Montei said Skittles wasn't banking on Seattle defending its Super Bowl championship when they made the commitment to advertise in this year's game. But disgruntled Bears fans weren't the only Chicagoans cheering when the Seahawks rallied furiously to defeat the Green Bay Packers in Sunday's NFC title game.
"Obviously we couldn't plan for Seattle making it into the Super Bowl," Montei said. "We developed the ad team agnostic. But I can confirm that we're going to do a Seattle Mix, like we did last year."
Twitter @RobertChannick