This is a screenshot from one of my family’s favorite ads which is a skittle commercial where the boy has teeth for skittles.  A girl walks up to him and kisses him and then walks away with skittles in her mouth. The commercial ends with the famous slogan “Taste The Rainbow” and even adds another slogan that is only apart of this ad which is “french the rainbow”. It is really random and funny and my family has always quoted skittles ads in general because they follow this common thread of just being really odd and attention grabbing. They are all also really short and follow the same format of something random happening, then a large voice comes in and yells the slogan and rainbow pictures of skittles basically get thrown in your face. The ads are short and sweet so they are always fun to watch, however now learning more about marketing strategies I am looking at them differently.

For example, my family would always look skittle commercials up on youtube and watch them for fun, unknowingly being targeted by skittles to buy their products. We would always walk around the house quoting some of the jokes in the commercials and we would all know what we were referring to – the skittles commercials. Now looking back, the commercials actually never say anything about the product and just are full of chaotic, random scenes. I also noticed that they really focus on the rainbow and colorful aspect of skittles (even though that has nothing to do with the taste) and purposefully have either not a lot of colors then have the skittles stand out in the ad, or the whole ad is covered in rainbow. They basically throw their marketing at the audience, and we never consciously realized that it was a part of a marketing strategy. Our “lizard brains” were getting more and more used to seeing and even quoting these ads that it definitely affected our purchasing habits subconsciously. I find this so weird to me because none of these ads say anything about the actual candy, and it actually is kind of gross and unhygienic when you think about someone having teeth of skittles, which are horrible for your teeth. However, none of this reflection actually occurred in me or any of my family members when we were subconsciously being targeted.