How Skittles Turned a Rainbow Strike Into a Canadian Documentary
Skittles' 'Struck by a Rainbow' is a three-and-a-half-minute mock-documentary created by BBDO Toronto for the Canadian market in December 2014, following a man whose face was transformed after being struck by a rainbow, translating the brand's longstanding 'Taste the Rainbow' tagline into a literal, absurdist narrative delivered as digital film.
The campaign exists as a single digital media asset, a creative decision that concentrates the brand's storytelling ambition into one self-contained piece rather than dispersing it across a traditional multi-channel campaign. In Canada, where confectionery competition is intense and consumer attention increasingly migrates toward digital environments, Skittles and BBDO chose documentary grammar as their vehicle. The mock-documentary format borrows the visual and editorial conventions of factual filmmaking — talking-head interviews, handheld camerawork, measured pacing — and applies them to the brand's signature surrealism, allowing the absurd central premise to land with the weight of apparent truth.
The campaign's objective is legible from its construction: extend the cultural relevance of the Skittles rainbow mythology among a Canadian audience accustomed to the brand's escalating strangeness, while generating organic digital sharing through a piece of content compelling enough to travel without paid amplification. As reported by thecreativesroom.com, the work earned more than 666,000 views, a substantial reach figure for a single digital asset with no announced media spend behind it. The campaign was archived and published in December 2014, as documented by clapboard.com, and its Cannes Lions recognition arrived the following year, confirming the industry's reception of the work as a benchmark in branded content. 'Struck by a Rainbow' earns a Clapboard Score of 77 out of 100, reflecting its formal discipline, creative ambition, and the measurable cultural traction it achieved inside the confectionery and snacks category.
Skittles operates within a confectionery and snacks landscape defined by competitors whose brand voices tend toward warmth, nostalgia, or energy. By 2014, Skittles had established a distinct counter-position: a commitment to the strange, the unexpected, and the aggressively absurd. In Canada, where Mars-owned Skittles competed for shelf presence and mental real estate against brands including Starburst and Sour Patch Kids, the imperative to maintain tonal distinctiveness was commercially meaningful.
The strategic logic of 'Struck by a Rainbow' rests on a consumer insight that BBDO Toronto had been refining since at least 2011. Skittles' audience does not merely tolerate the brand's surrealism — it seeks it out, shares it, and uses it as social currency. A documentary-style social experiment format exploits this behaviour directly. The documentary mode signals seriousness and authenticity, and the collision of that mode with an impossible premise — a man literally transformed by a rainbow, that quintessential meteorological phenomenon — generates the cognitive dissonance that Skittles' most effective work has always relied upon. As documented by historyoasis.com, the 'Taste the Rainbow' platform was originally launched in 1994 by D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, meaning BBDO inherited a thirty-year-old brand promise and found a way to make it feel genuinely new in the Canadian market in 2014. The decision to work in long-form digital video rather than a conventional television spot reflects the platform reality of the mid-2010s, when Canadian audiences were consuming more video content online and when branded content was beginning to earn serious recognition at major award shows, including Cannes Lions, which created its Branded Content and Entertainment category precisely to accommodate work of this kind.
Conor Byrne directed 'Struck by a Rainbow' for production company The Corner Store Films, based in Toronto. The film's effectiveness depends entirely on the conviction of its documentary grammar: if the formal mimicry fails, the absurdist premise collapses into mere novelty rather than landing as genuine wit.
Robert Scarborough served as cinematographer, and his work provides the visual foundation for the mock-documentary illusion. The handheld register, naturalistic lighting, and interview-style framing that characterise factual filmmaking are the tools through which the rainbow transformation premise is made to feel plausible within the film's internal logic. Griff Henderson edited the film, with Sara Windrim serving as assistant editor; the pacing of the piece — at three and a half minutes, longer than almost any conventional advertising format — required editorial discipline to sustain engagement without the artificial compression of a thirty-second spot. Greyson Matthews Toronto provided the music, a choice that reinforces the tonal calibration of the piece, while Saints Editorial Toronto handled post-production services, as documented by clapboard.com.
The creative leadership came from Executive Creative Director Carlos Moreno, with Creative Directors Chris Booth and Joel Pylypiw shaping the work, as credited by clapboard.com. Producers Tyler Byrne, Aimee DeParolis, and Susi Patterson oversaw the production. The creative premise — the literal interpretation of 'Taste the Rainbow' as a meteorological phenomenon made physical on a human face — connects directly to BBDO Toronto's earlier work in the same vein. As documented by thecreativesroom.com, the agency's 2011 'Touch the Rainbow' film used interactivity to make the rainbow tangible; 'Struck by a Rainbow' extends that logic into long-form documentary territory, trading interactivity for immersion and building the brand's rainbow mythology one absurdist chapter at a time across the Canadian market.
No verified third-party performance data beyond view count and awards recognition for 'Struck by a Rainbow' is publicly available in detail sufficient for granular analysis. What the public record does confirm is substantial. As reported by thecreativesroom.com, the campaign accumulated more than 666,000 views as a single digital asset, a figure that reflects meaningful organic distribution for a three-and-a-half-minute branded film in the Canadian market in 2014.
The awards record is documented and specific. Per thecreativesroom.com, 'Struck by a Rainbow' won a Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2015 in the Branded Content and Entertainment category, and a Bronze Lion in the Film category. Two Lions from a single digital asset represents a meaningful commercial and creative validation for BBDO Toronto and for Skittles' parent company Wrigley in the Canadian market. The Branded Content and Entertainment Lion is particularly significant because that category evaluates work on the quality of its content proposition, not merely its executional finish — a Silver in that context affirms that the documentary format was not merely a formal conceit but a genuinely effective content strategy.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates that Skittles' rainbow mythology is elastic enough to sustain long-form storytelling. The confectionery and snacks category rarely produces documentary-format content that earns serious award recognition; the fact that a Canadian campaign built around a meteorological phenomenon — a rainbow — generated both substantial viewership and two Cannes Lions in 2015 suggests the strategy was both timely and well-executed. The work reinforces BBDO Toronto's position as one of the most creatively consistent agencies operating within this category.
'Struck by a Rainbow' is a three-and-a-half-minute mock-documentary created by BBDO Toronto for Skittles in Canada in December 2014. The film follows a man whose face was transformed after being struck by a rainbow, extending the brand's 'Taste the Rainbow' tagline into a literal, absurdist narrative distributed as a single digital asset, as documented by clapboard.com.
The campaign won two Cannes Lions in 2015. It received a Silver Lion in the Branded Content and Entertainment category and a Bronze Lion in the Film category, as reported by thecreativesroom.com. Both Lions were awarded to BBDO Toronto for the work produced for the Canadian market in 2014.
Conor Byrne directed the film for production company The Corner Store Films in Toronto. Executive Creative Director Carlos Moreno and Creative Directors Chris Booth and Joel Pylypiw led the creative development at BBDO Toronto, as credited by clapboard.com. Robert Scarborough served as cinematographer on the production.
The campaign extends a creative lineage rooted in the 'Taste the Rainbow' platform launched in 1994, as documented by historyoasis.com. BBDO Toronto's earlier 2011 'Touch the Rainbow' and 'Exchange the Rainbow' activations established the rainbow as a manipulable brand device; 'Struck by a Rainbow' translates that logic into long-form documentary storytelling for Canada in 2014.
The campaign generated more than 666,000 views as a single digital media asset, as reported by thecreativesroom.com. That figure represents substantial organic reach in the Canadian market for a three-and-a-half-minute branded documentary released in December 2014 without a documented paid media component supporting distribution.
The mock-documentary format allowed BBDO Toronto to apply the visual grammar of factual filmmaking to an impossible premise, making the rainbow transformation feel plausible within the film's logic. This collision of seriousness and absurdity is consistent with Skittles' established brand voice in Canada and exploits the audience's appetite for shareable, strange content in the confectionery category.
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