Masterfoods USA is rolling out Mega M&Ms with a reported $10 million in marketing support, courting adults with bigger candies in different colors.
Mega M&Ms are 55% bigger than flagship M&Ms and come in teal, beige, maroon, gold, brown and blue-gray in plain and peanut varieties.
This isn’t the first time that Hackettstown, NJ-based Masterfoods up-sized M&Ms: It sold “Ogre-sized” M&Ms last year through a promotional tie-in with DreamWorks’ Shrek 2. The candy brought $21.3 million in incremental sales in only eight weeks. (Thomas J. Paul, Inc. handled.) That success, and consumer requests for more, prompted Masterfoods to add bigger M&Ms to its line up permanently.
Mega M&Ms launch support includes heavy TV, print and in-theater ads, sampling and a dedicated “Megalab” Web site with viral e-mail. Themed “Perfectly Big,” four humorous TV spots show officer workers confounded by football-sized M&Ms. In “Copier,” a worker tosses an M&M to the boss, who misses the catch and lets the candy crush the copier. In “Caught,” a man denies to co-workers that he has any M&Ms, even though they can see him trying to hide one; they end up wrestling over it. BBDO Worldwide, New York, handles ads.
The Web site tells a tale of four scientists who spent five months concocting Mega M&Ms. Grey Worldwide, New York, handles the site. M&M’s iconic characters are on packaging, but don’t appear in ads.
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