Mischief is afoot this week with the Super Bowl returning for its LVII season and, with it, the inevitable roll-out of the best of 2023’s television advertising. There will be ads that are sure to make us laugh, cry and in this case; confused?

Last year, I wrote about the M&M controversy when Mars Inc, the parent company for the M&M’s brand, had softened the image of the “female” candies. The Green M&M had swapped her “sexy” go-go boots for sneakers, and the brown M&M (who recently joined this group in 2012) switched from her “sexy” high heels she’s worn as a chocolate business executive (that’s in her “bio”) to a lower heel shoe. They also removed some of the Green M&M’s eye make-up.

Well, these changes caused a media backlash. Some thought Mars had gone too far to placate progressive voices, while others thought they hadn’t gone far enough.

Mars had a chocolatey mess on their hands. They went into meetings for months about the negative publicity, and when they emerged, they posted a statement on Twitter.

“America let’s talk. In the last year, we made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet. But we get it – even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing. Which was the last thing M&Ms wanted since we’re all about bringing people together.

Therefore, we have decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies. In their place, we are proud to introduce a spokesperson America can agree on – the beloved Maya Rudolph. We are confident Ms. Rudolph will champion the power of fun to create a world where everyone feels they belong.”

They are right. Who doesn’t love Maya Rudolph? I know her from Saturday Night Live and the movie Bridesmaids. I am also aware of that interesting part of her bio, which states that she is the daughter of Minnie Riperton. Who?

Minnie Riperton was a popular singer who had a monster hit in the 1970’s “Loving You.” Every teen girl back then tried to mimic that iconic four octave vocal range culminating in the “Ahhhhhh” at the end of every verse.

After the announcement, Rudolph responded “I am a lifelong lover of the candy and I feel like it’s such an honor to be asked to be part of such a legendary brand’s campaign, it’s a very fun pairing, if I do say so myself.”

“Okay, we are moving on” I thought. The candies have joined stars like Dan Levy and Danny DeVito in Super Bowl ads for decades. But now Maya will go solo.

Or is she? It appears Mars has something more up its candy sleeves and they are using a red (and green and brown) herring to throw the public off.

According to the site Polygon.com:

“After a whirlwind of announcements, and then backtracking on those announcements, it turns out the M&M’s “spokescandies” mascots are here to stay after all.

On Friday, a spokesperson from Mars Wrigley confirmed to the New York Times that the candy characters would be returning in an ad for the upcoming Super Bowl. The news comes after the company said, on Monday, that it would be pulling the characters from branding “indefinitely” and replacing the characters with the comedian Maya Rudolph.

“Mars would not waffle so quickly” I thought, they had a year to plan. And then the new “guerilla” ad campaign hit the airwaves this week. As an old college advertising minor, I can say “guerilla campaigns” are a real technique. Don’t think combat, think surprise.

Have you seen them yet? The first includes Maya Rudolph quietly sitting at a desk, by herself, explaining that she is the new spokesperson. She then proceeds to open a bag of M&M’s, pulls one out to show that it has her face on it. Then you see all the candies in the bag have her face on them.

The next ad also has a close-up of Rudolph and this time she explains that she has re-branded the name from M&M to Ma&Ya’s (Maya).  Ma&Ya’s now has its own Twitter page (@mmschocolate).

I laughed. Social media has outraged customers saying that they won’t buy “Ma-Yas” or eat the clam-flavored ones (a third ad.)

It was then when I realized Mars is only pulling some candy-coated shells over our eyes. This is just one huge publicity stunt for them. It’s a classic Super Bowl fake-out play. They have no intention on replacing their beloved cartoon candies with a comedian.

What began as a legitimate complaint about why candies had to be “sexy”, evolved into Mars acknowledging the mistake and then successfully turning it into something that brings the humor back.  They are stirring up a little buzz too for Sunday. This is only a guess, but I think we will see an M&M ad which incorporates both Ms. Rudolph and the candy mascots. She is a song and dance talent too, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an over-the-top musical number.

I could not resist this story since I covered the sexy debacle a year ago. And I give kudos to Mars for turning a negative into a fun positive. I’ll be watching this Sunday. I hope the ad scores.

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