FRANCE – Karolina Kaluzna, Associate Creative Director of VML Poland and Witold Zorski, Ferrero’s Global Head of Digital shared the road to making Tic-Tac Minions a reality. Here are ten great things that made the people who attended the talk go bananas.
10. UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE
If you look at the candy, you may not even need to squint, the shape was perfect. And after sometime, consumers shared their discovery on social media.
9. D-I-Y not?!
Consumers got excited with the idea. They made their own versions of the Tic-Tac Minions, colored and drew over the original candy. One problem, it was not edible.
8. JUST LISTEN
As Witold said in the talk, “Being a marketer is being a listener”. So the Minions Tic-Tac should happen. With the clamor for collaboration, Ferrero reached out to Universal Pictures. Good thing, the deal pushed through.
7. FLAVOR?
Of course, Banana! And it took testing of 6 variations of banana flavorings before they got the right one.
6. CANDY DEEP
The journey to finding the right “yellow” was a big consideration because this will affect the production. They tested over several months just to get the right AND EDIBLE formula for the “yellow”. TRIVIA: In every piece of Tic-Tac, there are over 200 layers of candy. According to Karolina, it takes 24 hours more or less to finish just one pill.
5. 20% IMAGE
As a rule, only a 20 percent of a Tic-Tac surface can be printed-on but that did not stop the team. They went back to the drawing board and pushed the execution until they reached a compromise with the R&D team. So the print of the Minion characters is now 80 percent of the Tic-Tac surface.
4. SUMMER OF BABABANANANA
The upcoming third movie was the perfect vehicle to this big partnership. Ferrero could have launched earlier, but at least they’re not stupid to do that.
3. OVER TWO BILLION
With this limited run, Ferrero made over two billion pieces of these happy pills. That’s enough to cover a line of side-by-side from France to the moon and back, twice.
2. SOLD OUT
One of the first few countries they launched the product was in Australia, sold out. The US, sold out. There was even a man who bought 400 packs in one go, and offered the seller to buy the display module. And as expected (actually, the client claimed they did not expect), people are buying more than one pack. Consumers are collecting all the packaging variants.
1. GIVE ME A DOSE
They gave us packs of these limited edition Tic-Tac Minions, and Ferrero also made a Cannes Lions edition of the Tic-Tacs. All I can say is a minion thanks.
Roman Olivarez is a Creative Director from Lowe Philippines.
