Terrible M&M ad campaign comes to predictable end
Last night saw the M&M ad campaign begun earlier this year end with a Maya Rudolph Super Bowl ad and follow-up commercial
TV Features Foods
2023 had barely begun when M&M’s, a brand of chocolate candy, embarked on the most brain-deadening ad campaign we’ve witnessed in some time. First, the company released an all-women mascot package that drew inevitable ire from the Fox News crowd. Then, content that its trap had been sprung, it announced the retirement of its line-up of chocolate orb people in favor of new spokesperson, Maya Rudolph. Other brands suckled onto the publicity teat distended like a boil from the effort as the deeply cynical, deeply stupid culture war carried on toward the outcome we all saw on the horizon: A Super Bowl ad starring Rudolph that, after it aired last night, was followed up with the mascots reinstated and order restored to the world of Brands.
The punchline on this soul-weakening, month-long joke sees Rudolph make her public debut as the representative of “candy-coated clam bites.” The commercial includes a song, people making faces as they try the new formula, and the red M&M popping up toward the end with a sign that reads “HELP!”
Soon afterward, the second half of the marketing plan was launched through a follow-up commercial, this one reassuring a troubled world that the M&M’s mascots are now “back for good” and that—no really, guys!—the whole clam bite thing was a bit. The chocolate creatures take questions at a press conference and a new slogan promises that M&M’s are transcending partisan politics. They are now “for all funkind.”
The commercial puts everything back in place. The orange M&M once again suffers from an anxiety disorder as a fun quirk, the red M&M is a smirking rascal, and the purple and green M&Ms are wearing whatever kind of shoes the internet needs them to wear in order to find them sexually enticing. Thank god.
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52 Comments
well i’m glad THIS all worked out for the best then.Thank goodness, ‘merica is fixed
You’re missing the part where the former mascots were doing ad work on other products.
Right? How are they going back. What about Green’s new job working for Zappos?
I’m just glad AV Club sniffed this out from the beginning. Outlets like CNN and New York Times took the bait hard and were uncritically reporting that M&Ms was making the change.
And yet, it doesn’t matter if people are “reporting” on it cynically or vehemently or anything in between, people are talking about the M&Ms ad campaign, and everyone gets to write yet another article about it. Sounds like a pretty successful ad campaign to me.
It was SO obviously a joke
It made certain right-wing media folks fly their own idiot flags, so there’s that.
You mean more so than usual, right?
they were all just horny little freaks who liked to jack it to the Green M&M
That’s not true and you know it.
Tucker Carlson specifically wanted the Brown M&M to walk all over him and was very clear about it. If you’re going to go after the right wing’s candy fetish kink, you better get your facts straight.
I mean, those lips though
“Tucker, did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny?”“NO!”“Neither did I, I was just asking.”
Whenever I long for the days when abortion was not a political issue, I remind myself that there was also a time when candy ads were not considered a political issue.
It’s amazing that now, eating your vegetables makes you a “satanic liberal”, at least according to the response over the Chick-Fil-A cauliflower sandwich.I suppose all of those Iowa corn-eaters and Idaho spud-lickers are now all Demmy-crats in the eyes of Faux News brainwashees.
My mom is a life-long, kale-loving conservative Republican. One thing we can agree on is that KALE IS NOT POLITICAL.
Kale???
Kale doesn’t sound like meat!You must be one of those Faux-News hating, Ukraine-loving liberals that doesn’t love guns enough!(anything can trigger these days!)
I never saw the follow-up commercial, since I stopped watching after the game. It was a poorly-conceived campaign, but if you’re going to do whatever that was…buy an ad during the next break to run your “real” spot.
Say it was “terrible” all day long, but conservatives were legit angry about it. They spent hours on prime time TV and in comments sections ranting and raving and showing their whole asses about it. If anything, it was vital market research that showed how easily manipulated Republicans really are. Thanks to this template, by the time the 2024 election rolls around, we’ll have them screaming about Mr. Clean having a sexy boyfriend or whatever while President Biden is talking quietly about increasing Social Security payments.
You realize they scream about this stuff because it plays well to the republican base right? It genuinely gets people to vote republican. Don’t act like the right wing setting the political agenda for the whole country is a good thing.
Putin and Iran know their lives and wealth depend on getting a republican back in the White House and will spare nothing in their effort to influence the election. Combined with all the election denying maga chuds who won lower level state positions helping them out, they shouldn’t have any trouble.It won’t matter what the idiots on TV are saying .
That all could’ve been accomplished, AND a clever commercial could’ve been made. Conservatives are always angry. M&Ms looked weak with the milquetoast little campaign.
Which means they took it just about a seriously as necessary. Their product is already at 100% market saturation.
Look, can I fuck the M&Ms now, or not?
How was it a terrible campaign when nobody on earth has been able to shut up about friggin M&Ms for the last 6 weeks? Seems to me like an extremely successful campaign.
A spectacularly bad and very lame payoff to something everybody everywhere all at one saw coming.
Except F*X. I don’t care if it was a bad ad/campaign. It made carlson and the rest of the hyper-hysterical talking heads look like idiots. Everyone with a brain cell knew it was a joke, yet they are so self-unaware and righteous, they couldn’t figure it out. Job well done M&M’s!
Well that is a very good point. I guess I meant more the way the payoff was handled when we all knew it was coming.
it announced the retirement of its line-up of chocolate orb people in favor of new spokesperson, Maya Rudolph.Either the comma should be omitted or a should be inserted before new spokesperson.
It’s not hard to believe that it was a bit. It never made sense. But here you are, writing an article about it. So who wins, Reid McCarter? Who really wins?
Not us
Stupidest campaign since the IHOP/IHOB idiocy.
Anybody even remember that?.
I diagree. Stupidest campaign in history.
Remember Pasta Hut?
Vaguely.
chances are the ad campaign will likely end up one of the most successful of the year. the amount of free advertising over the meme is likely multiple exponentials compared to what they paid in to it.
I was on a site earlier today that said it was one of the best ads. In fact, there’s a link to it up there in the article.Having been unaware of the leadup and only seeing the YouTube posts after the game, I thought it was funny.
when will the entertainment industry stop foisting “maya rudolph” on us, it’s been decades. please no more
pluck out your stupid eyes then
the purple and green M&Ms are wearing whatever kind of shoes the internet needs them to wear in order to find them sexually enticingUm, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson was originally upset last year by the change in footwear for the Green and Brown M&M’s; I’m pretty sure the Purple M&M was just added this year, and it’s her very existence that seems to trigger the right, as apparently only the male Yellow M&M is supposed to have that particular body shape. Also, the follow-up commercial above still shows Green wearing sensible sneakers rather than the go-go boots that got ol’ Tuck excited.If you’re going to report on this whole stupid kerfuffle, at least get the facts right to show just how stupid it really was.
Isn’t the Purple M&M transgender lol
This thing was stupid, and read like it was related to the that little nazi’s fetish…but Maya Rudolph is pretty funny in the one ad, and you left out the ad here for Poker Face…and having Natasha Lyonne get paid for a Super Bowl ad without actually having to do anything dumb
I thought it was funny how she explained that the “new” name was a play on her name. But I’ve always liked that sort of anti-humor where the joke is that a simple joke is overexplained.
That also worked nicely with that it really felt like agents and agencies were pushing to have their clients’ names said in the commercials…as in: Adam Driver is not Tom Cruise or Keanu, but you’re stuck with him so you may as well learn his name!
If people are talking/writing articles about an ad campaign, it did its job. I’ve heard more conversation about m&m’s just in the past year than I had in entire decades.
Although it may have been a joke all along, they’re a huge candy company, and I would bet they were scrambling the entire time. Mars was probably going to really axe the characters when the initial idiot outrage happened. Then they realized just how much money they would lose if they catered to them and had an emergency course change. I’d like to see some time-stamped work before I believe a massive corporation is decent is all I’m saying.
Well, “poking fun at a group for some stupid overreactions for the purpose of a buzzy ad campaign” and “exploiting people and the environment in the pursuit of another 0.1% increase in dividends” are not mutually exclusive, after all.
Yup, called it. I knew the whole thing was a Work from day one.
EXCUSE ME, M&M’s didn’t start a culture war. Tucker Weak Sauce Niedermeyer Carlson did when he got big mad that Green M&M wasn’t wearing her sexy go-go boots anymore. The whole M&M ad campaign was a troll job and it was DELIGHTFUL
I was raped by a package of crunchy M&M’s.
citation needed – no one would be desperate enough to touch you
You’ll get pussy one day kid, chin up!
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