ACOB S3E8 M&Ms

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00:00

This episode of a change of brand is brought to you by brand pad. A new standard of brand guidelines. Brand pad is an online platform made by designers for designers. Keep listening for a special code just for you, our listeners.

Kristie Malivindi

00:17

The characters were historically the assets that all of the time and energy and money had been invested in developing. But increasingly we're seeing we're getting briefs and questions come through about what does the world with no characters look like for m&ms? Not that the characters are ever going anywhere. They're not going anywhere. But certain touchpoints certain markets certain things, we needed to be able to create designs and kind of express the brand, with all of the personality and fun and kind of storytelling and joy that the characters bring, but without the characters.

Blake Howard

01:03

Hey, everybody, welcome to a Change of Brand a show featuring behind the scenes stories of rebrand glory and drama or disaster. I'm your host, Blake Howard. To start today's story on the m&ms 2022 brand refresh. I want to take a little detour, a rock and roll detour. Actually. It was May 15, 1979. Van Halen were backstage of Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens on their World Vacation tour. They were there to perform hits like “Dance the Night Away” or “Running with the Devil” before 1000s of people. They arrived early that day, and as they entered their green room, singer David Lee Roth saw a bowl of candies containing brown m&ms, and in classic David Lee Roth style, he promptly trashed the place.

Like many big named acts of their day, Van Halen had a detailed contract called a rider to detail out exactly what the promoter would provide, certain commitments to lighting and sound gear, backstage perks, and even persnickety things like a specific brand of toilet paper. And Van Halen might have been the most persnickety of them all. Especially David Lee Roth, he was a known perfectionist, and their contracts were notoriously specific, so much detail in fact that production crews might miss or forget some of the fine print and get one little thing wrong.

To fix that problem, David Lee Roth added yet another persnickety detail. A bowl of m&ms was to be set out for the band to enjoy. However, brown m&ms were exclusively not allowed. For years, this detail seemed like a vain Rockstar Power Flex just to do it because they could. However, many years later, the band revealed that was their canary in the coal mine. If they entered a green room and noticed even one brown m&m, they would immediately check all the gear and additional details assuming the contract wasn't fully red, and on many occasions after realizing the contract wasn't fully read, they would absolutely destroy the greenroom.

Beyond classic rock folklore, m&ms is a candy that most people around the globe know and enjoy. I, myself am a fan. Give me a handful of the original m&ms all day every day. No peanut, no peanut butter, no crisp, no pretzel, no frills, just the classic candy shell and chocolate. You can tell a lot about someone in fact based on their m&m preference, I also owe m&ms credit for the potty training of all three of my kids, one for number one or two for number two.

These tasty little delights are only outmatched by their founding story, brand history and recent revamp. This change story is less about the logo and gets into some good old fashioned conceptual thinking, experimental variable type and politically charged headlines. Needless to say, you might want to sit back grab a bowl of popcorn, throw in some m&ms, of course and enjoy today's show. For more backstory on m&ms and what led up to this change of brand, let's go to brand strategist Tracy Clark for our briefing.

Tracy Clark

04:42

Mars Inc, the multinational manufacturer of candy, packaged food, pet, food veterinarian services and more began as a humble family run business more than 110 years ago. Born in Hancock, Minnesota in 1883, a young Franklin Clarence Morris was taught by his mother how to hand dip candy. By the time he was 19, the future magnate had begun a business of his own selling molasses and chips. In 1911 Franklin and his wife Ethel opened the Mars candy factory in Tacoma, Washington producing freshly made butter cream candy for wholesale. Unfortunately for them, that business flopped because there was already a well-established candymaker operating in the area. Dusting themselves off Franklin and Ethel moved back to Minnesota where they relaunched their candy venture, which would eventually become Mars Incorporated. Although Franklin was the founder of Mars Inc. His son Forrest was the brainchild behind some of Mars's most enduring brands. In 1924, Forrest dreamt up the Milky Way bar. Nearly 10 years later, he'd introduced the Mars bar, and in 1941, he brought m&ms to life. During the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s he saw soldiers snacking on the British candy Smarties, chocolate drops covered in a colorful shell of hardened sugar syrup which prevented melting.

06:10

Undeterred, in 1941, Forrest created his own patented process for creating what would become m&ms and the first batches of candy rolled out of a factory in Newark, New Jersey operating under the m&m limited brand name. The name m&ms comes from the last name of Forrest Mars and Bruce Murray, who's the son of Hershey chocolate President William F. Armory, who owned a 20% share in the candy company. The deal allowed Maurice Inc to use Hershey chocolate, which was being rationed because of World War II. And happily enough m&ms first big customer was the US Army. The hard candy shell meant m&ms could withstand tropical climates, and cardboard tubes of the candy were included in GI rations. When the war ended, American soldiers had developed a taste for m&ms, and business really took off. A new m&ms production facility opened in Tennessee, and in 1949, the company launched its signature tagline “melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” So, there's no chocolate mess and differentiates its brand from competitors. In 1950 m&ms began stamping its candy with a small black M, which was later changed to white in 1954, the same year that peanut m&ms went to market.

07:39

Over the decades new colors, cheeky characters, a wide range of flavors and Special Edition candies have all kept m&ms Among the most beloved confection brands in the world.

M&Ms ad:

07:53

So, you think Santa will like these red and green m&ms?

I don't know. I never met the guy.

He does exist.

Do exist.

Santa?

Tracy Clark

08:07

An estimated 400 million m&ms are produced in the US every single day. Through it all the m&ms brand more or less remain the same. But on the heels of his 80th year of bringing people together Mars Inc. opted to shake things up with an evolutionary brand refresh that would remind the world why m&ms are for everyone. Whether you're peanut or plain crunchy or crispy, you'll want to know what happens in this change brand.

Blake Howard

08:37

Dating back to 1941, the m&ms logo has always included thick condensed sans serif letters. In layman's terms, sans are more like blocky looking feet on the bottom of the letter or up top. You can probably picture the m&m letters in your mind without too much explanation. They're very recognizable.

The 2022 redesign was led by JKR a design and branding agency that you might remember from the Dunkin and Burger King episodes from season one. The brand refresh included a color palette update, a customized typeface, done in partnership with Monotype, motion standards and more. The real crux of the work was creating a flexible kit of parts to bring more cohesion to the brand. Be sure to see the change for yourself at www.achangeofbrand.com. Just click on this episode and scroll down to see the breakdown.

09:34

To rip this change story wide open, I spoke with Kristie Malivindi a design director at JKR who led the effort for the m&ms project. She's worked in Chicago, Boston, New York and currently lives in London. JKR has had a long-standing relationship with Mars Inc, the m&m parent company. While Kristie was in New York she had heard about some of the work for m&ms but once she got over to the London office, the task became hers.

Kristi Malivindi

10:05

The creative director on the project came to me and said, you know, we have an opportunity to potentially kind of relook at this brand, and do you want to come with me? And, yeah, of course, I want to. Of course, of course, of course.

Blake Howard

What was your impression of the m&ms brand at that time?

Kristi Malivindi

I've always felt like the brand just has so much potential. That's what's so exciting about it. Which is maybe a nice way of saying it's a little fragmented, and maybe not as nice as it could be out in the world at the moment. I mean, it's rare to have the opportunity to work on a brand that has such a legacy and like a cultural footprint, and it's just so ingrained globally.

There were two main challenges driving this project forward. Mar's Inc had been pushing to incorporate purpose more and more into their brands striving to provide value to their customers beyond just the products themselves. So that purpose work needed to be expressed visually. Secondly, the brand was just a bit fragmented. No, one single touch point was bad, but as a whole, it wasn't great.

Blake Howard

JKR had been pushing for a project of this magnitude for some time, and this was their moment. To put it really simply, it was just make m&ms cool.

Kristi Malivindi

11:32

Just make it cool. Like when I say that it had so much potential, it's like you have basically all the pieces, just yeah, make the brand cool, make it relevant. All the pre work that we were doing to kind of sell in the idea that we needed to do this project. The purpose is the thing that gave us the green light. But we were already basically sold on the fact that the brand was not flexible enough for this huge ecosystem. So, we had everything we needed for packaging. But then you start to look at social and stores and merch and retail, we didn't have the tools to actually design to those channels in any kind of efficient way. So, the brand was just not relevant.

Blake Howard

12:16

This project wasn't a sugar induced free for all, there were some pretty tight parameters in the brief.

Kristi Malivindi

12:24

There's a reality that the m&ms characters, which are very much loved are in question. There are some global markets where regulations have passed so that you can't use cartoon characters to sell candy to kids, which is totally fair. The characters were historically the assets that all of the time and energy and money had been invested in developing. But increasingly, we're seeing, we're getting briefs and questions come through about what does the world with no characters look like for m&ms, not that the characters are ever going anywhere. They're not going anywhere. But certain touch points, certain markets, certain things, we needed to be able to create designs and kind of express the brand, with all of the personality and fun and kind of storytelling and joy that the characters bring. But without the characters. The only thing that was off the table really was the logo.

Blake Howard

13:22

No touching the logo?

Kristi Malivindi

We were able to remove an eight-degree angle from the logo, which is a tiny, tiny detail that makes a huge difference. That was a hard-fought ridiculous detail. I mean, there are definitely days where I think like this is my life. This is my job. This is crazy. But for any designer out there, yeah, angled logo is a real bitch to try and use. It's just so problematic. To try and lock it up with anything. It's kind of clunky and unwieldy. Not very digitally friendly. I'm sure there are logos out there that are on an angle that are wonderful and beautiful and amazing. But m&ms logo on lentils if you will is not. They're called lentils fun fact an individual m&m.

Blake Howard

Really that's the lingo, lentil? Wow. I didn't know that. No beans are used in the production of m&ms, it’s actually, cocoa beans, right?

Kristi Malivindi

Yeah, the chocolate. In fact, a single m&m is called a lentil, like the bean. And do you know what you call a group of m&m lentils? A pack. Get it a pack of m&ms, like a pack of dogs, except for this is a pack of candy, you know, melts in your mouth, not in your hand in here.

Blake Howard

14:44

So where did you start? You kind of you had the purpose. You had a little bit of that initial research strategy and then you got the green light. Where did you start?

Kristi Malivindi

14:54

Internal strategy, coming up with a design idea because we needed some sort of North's Star for the design to ladder up to. And the purpose, the articulation of the purpose for m&ms was kind of an ever-evolving beast that BBDO was actually working on. So, BBDO is the, you know, incredible agency that has done the ad campaigns for years and years, they own and, you know, kind of really love and work on all the characters. So, they had kind of that piece of the puzzle that they were working on, we knew the overall concept of the purpose, the articulation has come to be to create a world where everyone feels like they belong. Even if we had that exact kind of locked, approved articulation at the very beginning of the project. It's not something you can exactly design to.

So, if I, yeah, went to my team and said, go ahead, create a world where everyone feels like they belong, they’d be like, Wow, okay. Okay. So, we came up with a design idea, we actually presented two different directions to the client. So that was, that first step in the process was the only time that we gave kind of a binary option to the client, the general concept was, you know, supporting diversity and inclusion, and everyone was feeling like they belong without those exact words. And so, we had gone to the client with one version being true colors, which we had kind of the, you know, a lovely manifesto, right up behind it, we pulled swipe of conceptual visuals, we did initial sketches of playing with some of the assets, like how you can manipulate some of the assets, so that they're starting to tell this story. So True Colors was all about really celebrating self-expression, everybody being an individual and really supporting that. And then the second concept was “m&m and..” so, it was really hitting on one was more singular, focused, celebrating the individual and “m&m and….” was more flipping it to everyone's invited, everyone belongs. It was the improv philosophy of “Yes. And”, you know, one plus one equals three, creativity, humanity, everything's better when you invite more kind of viewpoints and people. And yeah, when you collaborate with folks, in both instances, we made sure that the concept really felt intrinsically linked to the brand. And so, m&m and was the winning kind of direction. It just makes so much sense.

I mean, first of all, the brand started by the two guys, Mars and Murray, so it's two people coming together. There's an ampersand right in the middle of the logo. It's a brand where you'd never eat just one m&m. Like you get a bag of m&ms or pouch of m&ms, you open it up, and you pour out a handful.

You know, it's multicolored, multi shapes, multi size brands, when you think about, you know, there's peanut, there's chocolate, you open up a bag, you get all the colors. So, it was really kind of taking all of those insights, linking them together. And that was our that was our North Star.

We took the brand, piece by piece and like broke it apart. And then looked at each individual, you know, be it the logo, the typeface, or, you know, icons and symbols, illustration, tone of voice, we broke it apart to every single individual piece, and made sure that it was as meaningful and fun and distinctive, and yet flexible. You know, something's really needed to be flexible. So, we did the math kind of separately, refined and then started piecing it back together to see what we get.

Blake Howard

As they were piecing the visual puzzle together, they were getting some traction with the overall creative direction and were ready to let the cat out of the bag or the pieces out of the pack.

Kristi Malivindi

Every presentation we had, there's so much thinking and creative involved that every single presentation we have, especially that big one, we definitely had to set it up with. Okay, everyone, thanks for joining us today. And please bear with us because we're about to talk to you or at you or present to you for the next hour and a half solid, and we will definitely book time to have a follow up so we can have a conversation. You need to be able to take it away, digest, don't expect any, you know, any feedback in the room. But let us just kind of share with you all the work and the thinking and kind of the excitement around what we've been doing. That first big presentation was here's the idea. And then literally asset by asset we broke down. This is where you currently are. These are the opportunities this is the potential for what it could be and but kept it very separate. So kept it very individual. Then the final quarter of the presentation was looking at like a consumer journey and designing a whole series of touch points. So, we did jump all the way ahead to put it all back together. And this is how a single consumer could experience the brand. You know, and one of those incredible days when you wake up to a brand tweeting you, and then go out the door. I mean, it would be terrifying if anybody actually experienced any brands, the way that we set them up as designers, when we're kind of presenting a consumer journey back.

Blake Howard

You're like, why is the m&ms stalking me?

Kristi Malivindi