• by Sarah Mahoney , Yesterday

There is something almost adorable about M&M's creative formula: little chocolate candies, beloved by millions, living in constant dread of being eaten. It has worked for decades. Now, with the debut of M&M's Pop'd Caramel, the brand's first freeze-dried product, it is working again — this time with a slightly cannibalistic twist. Humanity has found yet another way to get those M&M's.

Ashley Gill, vice president of brands and content marketing at Mars, says the innovation itself follows a trend on TikTok, with consumers —especially texture-forward Gen Zs and millennials — seeking freeze-dried candy. Mars introduced the format to Skittles last year, before moving on to expand the Caramel M&M’s line.

The product is unexpected. People bite in expecting the M&M's signature crunch-then-creamy experience, “and instead get something light and airy. They’re surprising, but in a really great way,” Gill tells Marketing Daily.

Mars is launching the product with three new spots from BBDO Chicago*, under the ongoing “It’s more fun together” platform.

"There's just so much comedic tension in that core dynamic," Gill says, “and it’s been at the heart of these characters since the 1990s. When M&M's is at its best creatively, it's funniest — and what we see people respond to most is when we play in this world of adult humor."

The campaign arrives at a moment when the broader confectionery category is churning with textural novelty, inspired in part by a candy aisle full of new combinations of gumminess, chewiness, crunchiness and juiciness.

The strategy is to make sure innovation news stays "inextricably linked" to the core brand, so that even a consumer who never picks up the new formulation still walks away with a stronger impression of M&M's overall.

Gill says the launch aims to re-engage lapsed customers who haven’t snacked on M&Ms in a while, as well as diehard fans who want to see what the brand does next. The core buyer, she notes, will always have their bag of reliable M&Ms. The Pop'd line is about giving everyone else something to be curious about.

Media plans skew digital and social, although ads are also running on broadcast and streaming platforms, with a particular focus on Gen Z and millennial consumers.

More M&M's news is coming later this year. There will be innovations “that are classically M&M's, just brought to life in a new and interesting way."

*An earlier version incorrectly credited the campaign to BBDO New York.