Aligning M&M’S to engage effectively with modern audiences. 

Mars Wrigley approached the Storyland Studios team for help revamping their most famous brand, M&M’S. This beloved brand had worldwide recognition, wide distribution, and scale, but needed a refreshed connection with modern audiences. Mars Wrigley was ready to create a consistent, truly connected brand experience to deliver against M&M’S new brand promise: Belonging.

The Big Idea: The Secret Life of M&M’S

Our team went to work developing a living metaphor to guide our strategic storytelling and concept development for M&M’S. The living metaphor that emerged was the 7-Layer Cake, a layered brand story connected across seven layers of the customer experience. We considered every part of the M&M’S story and experience, from website to flagship stores, major retail accounts to strategic initiatives, and beyond.

M&M’S well-known, colourful lentils inspire feelings of childhood nostalgia and fun. They’re the perfect portal to moments of connection, authenticity, and community—an answer to the universal need for belonging. M&M’S helps people from all backgrounds feel included, ultimately creating shared moments of connection that lift the human spirit. It accomplishes this by championing fun as a way to share our true selves and connect with others.

We took M&M’S through our proven storytelling process, defining the primary elements of the brand story:

• Character: M&M’S, a modern Jester who uses colourful wit and humour to break down barriers to belonging.
• Setting: Moments, communities, and occasions where people come together and experience a taste of belonging.
• Plot: In a fractured world, M&M’S champions fun as the single most powerful way to help people connect and share their true selves.

From that storytelling process emerged our Big Idea: The Secret Life of M&M’S. We imagined a connected world where these agents of fun are being sent out through all different touchpoints, including mobile, web, and in person.

“These delicious lentils are on a mission—sent into the world as agents of fun. Fun that helps people share their true-self and experience the taste of belonging. It’s not M&M’S without all of us.”

Realising and implementing strategic storytelling concepts on a global scale.

Since our collaboration, M&M’S have executed many of the ideas we worked on together, both in-store and online. We created in-depth concepts for both in-person and interactive experiences, including the user experience for M&M’S apps and websites, plus in-store experiences such as creative ways to use its famous colour tubes at grocery stores, colour walls at M&M’S stores, new interactive activities, and more.

Mars Wrigley is implementing aspects of our strategic storytelling in phases, including:

• Licensing partnerships and brand activations have spun off since we created this new Big Idea, from Kate Spade and Maybelline to Adidas and Krispy Kreme.
• An in-store curated dining experience: an M&M’S Cafe, now open in the Berlin M&M’S Store.
• In-store interactives, which carry through the idea of making connections through fun.
• Increased use of colour walls in M&M’S Stores and grocery stores, as a metaphor for M&M’S agents of fun being transported around the world.
• London’s M&M’S Store has the world’s biggest chocolate wall, with over 100 varieties of M&M’S to choose from.
• The Berlin M&M’S Store and the Magic Kingdom’s Main Street Confectionary at Walt Disney World (Orlando, FL) have implemented the M&M’S colour wall.
• The M&M’S Bake Studio on the M&M’S website, which is dedicated to giving people ideas for baking with M&M’S. In M&M’S Stores, these Bake Shops create a sense of connection through fun with friends and loved ones.
• Mobile games, including a free-to-play puzzle app called M&M’S Adventure which implements our story. Players can engage with their favourite characters and solve puzzles, adding a social component to mobile gameplay.

We’re thrilled to see so many concepts inspired by our connected story taking shape around the world.