M&M’S brand purpose is to create a world where everyone feels that they belong, through the power of fun. But the brand had been embroiled in conversations that actually divided people, rather than bringing them together. The 2024 Super Bowl was an opportunity to recenter the cultural conversation back to belonging.
From a business perspective, M&M’S also needed to increase awareness and share of voice within the peanut butter confectionary category. Despite Peanut Butter M&M’S being around since the ‘90s, it suffered low awareness.
Our idea was simple: Super Bowl winners get the fame, glory, and a fancy ring. But losers get nothing. So, we wanted to celebrate the 98% of fans and players of the 31 teams that didn’t win and needed a little comfort.
The U.S. is the brand’s biggest market and loves peanut butter products. In fact, it’s the fastest growing and largest flavor partition in the chocolate category. But the peanut butter category is dominated by its competition.
To increase awareness and “share of voice” within the category, the brand decided to make a big splash on America’s biggest advertising stage: the Super Bowl.
Year over year, the Super Bowl consistently boasts an audience of over ~110M viewers—a number increasingly rarer with streaming popularity and the proliferation of different programming.
With a viewership that substantial, the majority of the audience aren’t fans of a singular team playing in the Super Bowl and even fewer are fans of the final winning team. Since there are 32 National Football League teams and only one winning team, that means 31 other teams’ fans (roughly ~178M people) are not winners at the Super Bowl.
But there has never been a cultural prize for the losing team—those fans and teams are the most in need of comfort.
In our research on peanut butter and America’s love and fascination for the product, we found that it’s possible to make real diamonds out of peanut butter. The most famous cultural symbols for winning a Super Bowl are the Super Bowl championship rings: massive and glittering jewelry covered in diamonds that players wear proudly.
To create belonging for the losers while championing the power of peanut butter M&M’S to bring comfort, we conferred with scientists and diamond-making experts to transform comforting M&M’S Peanut Butter into glittering diamonds to be placed on the ring. (For real. We actually did this!)
We also worked with celebrity jeweler Ben Baller to painstakingly replicate a Super Bowl ring and created the “Almost Champions” Ring of Comfort: a first-of-its-kind, 14k gold ring with 12.7 carats and featuring diamonds made from M&M’S Peanut Butter.
To promote our Almost Champions Ring of Comfort, we created a Super Bowl ad starring three NFL Hall of Famers who famously never won a Super Bowl (Dan Marino, Bruce Smith, Terrell Owens), as well as Scarlett Johansson, an A-list actress who lost two Oscar races in one year.
The Ring of Comfort was a smashing success, earning 11 billion earned media impressions globally, with a 99% positive/neutral earned media sentiment.
Peanut Butter M&M’S sales increased 154% on mms.com, and sales increased 18% across January and February and over 20% in February alone. The brand also received a 10% year-over-year increase in total peanut butter earned share of voice against competition.
Google searches for ‘Peanut Butter M&M’S’ increased 38%, and DoorDash sales increased by 61%.
In an early effectiveness measure, M&M’S came in second (53.5%) when viewers were asked “which products they’d be open to purchasing” (AdAge).
Our Super Bowl ad also got considerable media coverage: mentions in multiple ‘Best Super Bowl commercial’ round-ups, appearing in top-tier outlets Narcity and Sportsnet, making “Best Ads” lists, including in ABC’s GMA, The Wrap, The Hill, Mashed, and Vogue, plus Top 10 Ad mentions in The Daily Meal, Awful Announcing, and The Athletic.
