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Skittles, the candy that’s mass marketed based in large part on its bright colors – with current tag lines of “experience the rainbow” and “taste the rainbow” – has gone temporarily colorless, saying in a series of public messages that “gay” pride, in all its rainbow glory, deserves to take front and center for a while.
The company went black-and-white for London’s recent “gay”-pride parade, in order to show solidarity for the LGBT movement.
First We Feast reported the campaign, noting how President Obama’s declaration of June as LGBT Pride Month pushed the rainbow even deeper into public presence but that Skittles then took it in an entirely new direction.
Specifically, Skittles stripped all colors off its packaging and candy.
“So this is kind of awkward,” the company said in a video announcing its campaign. “But we’re just going to go ahead and address the rainbow-colored elephant in the room. You have the rainbow, we have the rainbow and usually that’s just hunky-dory. But this Pride [parade], only one rainbow deserves to be the centre of attention – yours. And we’re not going to be the ones to steal your rainbow thunder, no siree.”
The “gay” pride site Pride.com touted the campaign on its website by writing: “Quite literally, black and white skittles [were] given out at Pride in London … We can’t stop smiling over this delightful statement.”
But not all saw the company as offering an altruistic gesture, however,
AdWeek, for instance, wrote: “Contrary to its rhetoric, Skittles’ precise goal here was to steal some of Pride’s ‘rainbow thunder.'”
