Take Home The Fun
View the case- Brand
- M&M's
- Year
- 2019
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- AR & VR
- Agency
- Chaos Theory Games
- With
- Traffik
Objective
M&M'S wanted to move packs off the shelf and give the brand a reason to stand out from routine candy promos. The campaign needed to pull in both loyal buyers and new shoppers, and it needed to make them buy again, not just once.
Solution
Point your phone at any surface around you — a table, the floor, a wall — and an M&M'S piñata pops into view, hanging in mid-air. Tap it to hit it; enough hits and it bursts, sending you on to the next piñata in the string. To keep playing past your free attempts, you enter the barcode from a real pack of M&M'S along with your receipt, which unlocks more rounds. Every hit and every piñata broken adds to your score on a shared leaderboard, where the top players split a prize pool. There's no tutorial and nothing to learn — you open the app and start swinging.
Results
Over a 6-week campaign: 12,000 game sessions, 49,000 piñatas broken, 521,000 taps recorded, and 6,600 product barcodes redeemed in-app, directly tying gameplay to pack purchases.
- 1
The entry point is a real-world purchase: the player buys a participating M&M'S pack in store, then visits the campaign's mobile promo page and downloads the free app from there.
- 2
A branded start screen introduces the M&M'S characters and the goal: smash a piñata for a chance to win prizes.
- 3
The player registers with a name and email, then enters the barcode from the purchased pack and uploads a photo of the receipt to unlock a play.
- 4
The game prompts the player to raise the phone and look around; using markerless AR, it places a virtual M&M'S piñata directly into the player's own surroundings, which they can walk around or approach.
- 5
The core mechanic is tap-to-hit: the player taps the screen to strike the piñata, each hit registers with a reaction and a rising score counter, in a fast, rule-light arcade session.
- 6
Enough hits break the piñata open, spilling M&M'S candy, and a fresh piñata takes its place, continuing the run as a streak of piñatas.
- 7
The session ends on a results screen showing the player's score, which is then posted to the campaign's shared leaderboard for comparison against other participants.
- 8
To improve their ranking, the player repeats the loop by buying another pack and entering its barcode for a new play, continuing across the campaign as prizes are drawn among entrants.
