A World of Pure Imagination: Candy and Branding in a Digital Age
This post is scrumdidilyumptious!
You have talking 3 foot sized M&Ms, you have pieces of the Rainbow with Skittles, and you have jerk off boyfriends with Twix, but while branding and candy have become synonymous with entertainment and joy and fun; you can’t beat a candy who’s branding is all about the imagination that comes from eating Willy Wonka candy.
Willy Wonka candy company is a subsidy Nestle and while Nestle has proven to not be able to let go of some of the control on their branding, I think it’s fair to say that when it comes branding candy and using entertainment to do so, Willy Wonka has an edge that most candy companies do not.
They have Ronald Dahl.
Probably one of the most influential children’s book writers of the English speaking world (think a time before Harry Potter), Ronald Dahl has the unmistakable knack for creating stories with imagination and impossibilities. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the character of Willy Wonka has proven that imagination is infectious even in the oldest of persons’ mind. So building an actual company that revolves around this world is almost too easy.
Then you have the movies. M&Ms maybe a nostalgic part of the American zeitgeist, but does Red, Yellow and the rest of the gang have a movie let alone a remake?
What’s difficult about candy and it’s branding is that you don’t necessarily need to advertise for candy. It’s like a Coca-cola and other companies that have been around so long that they’re cultural icons. The advertising is really to just remind people that they’re still there ever present ready for you to pick them up on the way to the cash register. They do the digital thing because everyone else is doing it.
The video page of the Willy Wonka site
That’s probably why Skittles made the mistake of moving completely to twitter. For a candy company social media is just another thing that people want to do and they might as well go along with it in order to stay current.
What’s great for Willy Wonka is that in ten years when they want to do another Golden Ticket contest, they can just remake the Ronald Dahl classic.
