Jolly Rancher "Keep On Sucking"
When we pitched Jolly Rancher, the team first agreed on one thing: we had to figure out a way to get “suck” into the tagline.
The campaign was built around a set of characters designed by our friend Kevin Lyons, updating JR’s dated clipart-style logo and branding. The work would center around these little guys, each representing an iconic Jolly Rancher flavor.
They suck at advertising. They suck at life. They remind you why you need candy: because sometimes when life sucks, you’ve just gotta suck right back.
Clearly, we focused on the suckiness of the candy (its main differentiator in a category dominated by Starbursts and Skittles). But the characters had to suck too.
The characters proved to be super adaptable to cultural events, which keeps conversation going. Eventually Anomaly hired a full time animator to react to current events in real time.
Since, you know, we suck, we always have the perfect person to make fun of ourselves.
And the people agreed. The tagline and the toons turned out to suck just as much as we’d hope they would.
