The freaky Skittles “Experience the Rainbow”-themed campaign out of TBWAChiatDay, New York, has been around for years now, but it never gets tired. “I think that has a lot to do with the client. They’re really open to new ideas, and we try to beat the last one every time,” according to TBWAChiatDay art director Craig Allen, who is currently working on the creative with copywriter Eric Kallman.
Given the nature of the campaign’s world, which melds reality with fantasy, there truly are endless possibilities in terms of concepts, Kallman added.
That said, the one taboo area–at least in the pair’s minds–was Piñatas. Piñatas and candy–it’s just too much of a cliché, Kallman reasoned.
Well, that’s what Allen and Kallman once thought. But then the duo started to imagine the aftermath of a Piñata being beaten, and they came up with the absurdly humorous concept of a man who is routinely battered because he looks so much like a Piñata and what happens after one particular attack.
This is the scenario played out in the :45 “Piñata,” which aims to sell Chocolate Skittles to candy-loving 12 to 17-year-olds.
The spot opens with a man who looks remarkably like a Piñata hobbling into what is apparently a break room full of colleagues. Arm in a sling and hobbling on a crutch, he approaches another man.
“Is that what you were looking for? New chocolate-flavored Skittles?” the Piñata man asks in a confrontational tone, tossing a bag of the candy on the table in front of the other guy.
The questioning continues: “Did you think you were going to hit me with that bat and little chocolate-y candies would come pouring out?” the Piñata man demands of the man who obviously attacked him.
“Piñata” ends with his attacker shamed, and the battered man declaring to him and the bystanders, “I have to buy my Skittles downstairs like everyone else. I’m just like everyone else!”
Tom Kuntz of MJZ directed “Piñata.” The strange world of Skittles was familiar turf to him. He has directed a number of other Skittles commercials, including “Beard,” which depicts a job interview during which a man’s long beard feeds him Skittles and even caresses the interviewer.
Good on paper In the case of “Piñata,” Kuntz’ initial priority was figuring out how the Piñata man would look and how that look would best be constructed. “That was the first thing we talked about with Tom, and up until the very shoot we were designing [the Piñata man’s] look. We wanted to make sure that it read because the spot hinges on you knowing he is a Piñata,” Allen said. “If you don’t, the whole spot fails.”
Ultimately, tests revealed that the effect was best achieved by simply attaching little bits of paper to a person’s face–this approach allowed for natural movement of the mouth and eyebrows, and therefore would enable the actor cast in the role to be expressive. A paper-covered suit, tie and jacket were also made.
After auditioning dozens of actors for the role of Piñata man, Kuntz cast Sean Donnellan. While other actors took on wimpy or angry tones, Donnellan offered a unique take on the Piñata man character. “He gave this old school, Ronald Reagan movie, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, almost antiquated 1950s, overdramatic trained actor read,” Kuntz recalled.
It wasn’t an approach either Kuntz or the creative team had considered, but Kuntz immediately knew it was right for the role and pushed for Donnellan to be cast. The actor arrived for the one-day shoot before sunrise and spent hours in makeup.
“He was really into the character,” Allen said, noting that Donnellan chose not to each lunch because he didn’t want to mess up his papered lips, although he did get some nourishment in the form of Jamba Juice carefully sucked through a straw.
“Piñata” was shot in one day by Kuntz and his crew, including DP Bryan Newman, on location in the break room of a technical school, and the director said he purposely gave the scene played out in the commercial “a stagey, kind of cheesy quality. I kept joking that this was an episode of Night Court.”
Counter punch The script was shot as it was written, but Kuntz and the creative team were coming up with lines on the fly for the actors to try. “In every Skittles job I have ever done, the script is always perfect, and the only thing we almost always universally change is the final end line and joke,” Kuntz said.
That was indeed the case with this spot, which is faithful to the original script except for the aforementioned last line in which the Piñata man pleads for everyone to see he is just like them, Kuntz shared. “I think the final line in the script was, ‘Enjoy your candy, Stephen,’ or something like that. But it dawned on me on the set to turn him into this Elephant Man kind of character where he is pleading to be accepted,” Kuntz said.
With all of the experimenting done on set, editor Gavin Cutler of New York’s Mackenzie Cutler had a lot of takes to choose from. “He left no stone unturned in finding the best performances possible,” Kallman praised.
“Piñata” was originally slated to air in :30 and :15 versions, but the agency and client decided to go ahead and do a :45, too. “The forty-five second [spot] allowed for emotions to build and awkward silences and moments to play out,” Kallman explained. “So we were happy to have the opportunity to do that version as well.”
