Maxham Settles the Score on Skittles

There's more than meets the eye in the sleepy town that features in Skittles' Super Bowl campaign this year. Created by DDB Chicago, the full spot for the candy brand aired last night after the agency teased a trailer a few weeks ago.

Now the full ad has been revealed (below), John Maxham, chief creative officer on the project, tells us what it's all about.

Tell us about the spot for Skittles this year?

Our Skittles Super Bowl spot is entitled Settle It. It involves a small, remote town that does things its own way. It's a place that time has seemingly forgotten about. In the absence of influence from the outside world, the town has evolved a culture that resolves disputes through arm wrestling.

As a result, they have developed unbelievably muscular arms. Everyone in the town has one of these huge arms, women, men, children, babies and pets. The brief centred around preferences for different flavours of Skittles, as many people have a favourite flavour. The Super Bowl seemed like the perfect venue to settle a dispute about a favourite flavour with our own version of a contest of strength.

Why did the client want to advertise at the event this year and when did you start preparing?

This is the first year Skittles is an official NFL sponsor, and its sister chocolate brands (M&Ms and Snickers) have played in this arena in the past. On Super Bowl Sunday people look to be entertained, and what better brand to do that than Skittles, which has a history of entertaining people at every turn. We kicked off this brief last spring.

How did you go about creating the arms in the film?

Once we cast our principals and extras and with the help of Legacy Effects in Los Angeles, we made molds of each cast member's right arm, then crafted 59 custom latex arms that were then each colour matched to the actors’ actual skin tone, freckling, arm hair, etc.

How did the story evolve down the line?

One of our creatives had a phrase stuck in her head: "Let's settle it the usual way!" So we asked, what was the usual way? It seemed in this dusty, forgotten town, they'd resort to a most primitive way: arm wrestling. That led to the idea of an entire town that, for generations, had settled everything this one way – and their arms had changed dramatically because of it.

Why did you think this spot would stand out from the pack at the event this year?

The Skittles brand lives in a skewed universe – one that's familiar to us, but twisted. In this universe, we don't rely on celebrity, glitz or pyrotechnics to make our point. That alone is very different than the philosophy behind a lot of Super Bowl work. Although, I should mention that I have absolutely no problem with celebrity, glitz or pyrotechnics and enjoy using them whenever possible.

Why do you think it's still important to get a piece of the ad space at the event considering there are so many different options and platforms today?

A downside to having so many choices when it comes to entertainment is that it's getting harder to talk about it with friends and co-workers because we're all watching different stuff. In other words, our response to the old water cooler question of "Did you see" is increasingly “no". The Super Bowl remains the exception. So many people watch it and actually look forward to the commercials, that it provides us with one of our last remaining opportunities to come together as a society and compare notes on a shared experience.

What do you see for the future of the event in the next few years? Will the slots continue to get more expensive and sought-after?

I see the event only getting bigger for marketers. It's one of the few times that commercials are not seen as a distraction from the main event, but actually part of the main event. People look forward to the spots so much that they're now teased out ahead of time. In fact, we released a trailer for Settle It, which we edited to have the look and feel of an upcoming film from J.J. Abrams or M. Night Shyamalan.