While most gummy campaigns try to sell texture through expected visuals and functional messaging, Skittles takes a completely different approach. The new campaign for Skittles Gummies does not explain the product through flavor or chewiness, but through a world where everything is “too soft.”
In a series of surreal spots created by TBWA\Chiat\Day, Critical Mass and Omnicom Production, softness becomes the central creative system. People sit inside a kangaroo pouch, jellyfish perform massages, and a balloon dog drags itself across a carpet trying to scratch an itch. Everything feels like a dream that is both funny and slightly uncomfortable, and that is exactly where the campaign’s strategy lies.
In a category where almost every gummy product can claim to be “soft,” Skittles is trying to do something different: make that characteristic memorable. The campaign was developed for a Gen Z audience, but far more important than the demographic itself is the way it communicates. Instead of a classic product demonstration, Skittles uses absurdity as a tool for differentiation in an overcrowded candy segment. Softness is no longer just a product benefit but an entire visual universe.
As creative directors Katie Bero and Brian Culp explained, the goal was not to portray “pleasant” softness, but to go one step further toward an “uncomfortably soft” experience that holds attention and stays in memory. That distinction matters because most FMCG communication still relies on the same category codes: macro product shots, texture, flavor explosions, and energetic cuts. Skittles deliberately avoids that language and chooses something that feels closer to internet culture and surreal meme aesthetics than to traditional candy advertising.
At the same time, the campaign does not feel like a random experiment because it remains fully aligned with the brand’s long-established identity. Skittles has spent years building its communication around absurd humor, strange situations, and treating bizarre events as completely normal. The new campaign simply transfers that logic into a new product segment.
That is probably its greatest success. The campaign does not try to invent a new tone of voice in order to seem relevant. Instead, it uses the brand’s existing DNA and adapts it to a new context.
It is also particularly interesting that every element was physically produced. The kangaroo suit, jellyfish, and other effects were not digitally generated but created through practical effects, further reinforcing the tactile feeling and “real” softness the campaign is trying to communicate.
The spots were directed by Carl Sundemo from production company Epoch, and the campaign will run across linear television, connected TV platforms, online video, and social media. Skittles Gummies launched in 2020, while the Skittles Gummies Fuego line was introduced in 2025.
The brand is simultaneously expanding its portfolio through products such as Skittles Pop’d and Skittles Littles, showing how innovation in the candy category today no longer comes only through new flavors, but through the way products are culturally positioned.
