Candyman

By: Spencer Garrett

M&Ms teamed up with musicians Zedd and Aloe Blacc to help produce a new track to promote the rich heritage of the M&Ms brand. The result is a catchy pop anthem played to the backdrop of older M&Ms commercials from decades past in an attempt to show M&Ms relevance within culture. You know, even though they’re just little chocolate candies.

The commercial has done a lot of interesting things. Namely, generated a ton of buzz. For starters, the actual TV spot is :60 seconds of good feels and M&Ms nostalgia guaranteed to get most people tapping their foot. The whole track (which is just over 3 minutes) has garnered 2.5 million views on Youtube and sparked a lot of conversation amongst electronic music fans. Zedd is an extremely well known name within the music world, and some feel he sold out heavy to M&Ms to help produce this track. Here, the paid elements within the advertisement would be Zedd’s endorsement and subsequent production of the track for Aloe Blacc to throw lyrics over. Furthermore, DJ/Producer superstar, and Mad Decent label owner, Diplo, jumped onto the scene to criticize Zedd’s choice over Twitter. The tweet sparked a huge debate online over artists selling out for a paycheck, and even targeted Diplo for being hypocritical with his career too.

The little online spat only furthered to popularize the Candyman television spot. I’m going to put my tinfoil hat on here, and say this may have been planned. Hell, the top comment on the Youtube video is a person commenting that they’re there because of the Diplo v. Zedd twitter spat. The weird thing is that both artists have proven to be friendly towards each other in the past. Hence my idea that this “beef” may have been planned all along.

Whatever, you think of the music world, selling out, or M&Ms the TV/online spot has been wildly successful in a short amount of time. I’d say M&Ms did a good job recruiting Zedd and Aloe Blacc. The bonus Twitter beef was just icing on the cake, and unintentionally pushed mass traffic to the M&Ms page without negatively tarnishing the chocolate candies reputation.

Diplo Tweet: twitter.com/diplo/status/712063388579401729

Youtube Spot: www.youtube.com/watch?v=otNV5lCmRKs