The First Song From Skittles' Super Bowl Musical Is All About How Advertising Sucks

One of this year’s biggest Super Bowl hijacks is slowly coming into focus, as Skittles is releasing some videos and songs from Skittles: The Musical—a 30-minute Broadway single-show production that will be held at Town Hall in New York on the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday. 

Creating a musical instead of a Super Bowl commercial is certainly a contrarian move, and that thumbing-the-nose continues in the songs themselves—which seem to be about the idiocy of advertising generally, and Super Bowl advertising specifically. 

The first song is literally called “Advertising Ruins Everything.” Below, see a video of Michael C. Hall performing it with the musical’s cast. 

Over on Spotify, there is already a cast recording album for the musical. (Apparently, even Broadway musicals need to be pre-released.) It consists of four songs. Along with “Advertising Ruins Everything,” there are two other tracks called “This Might Have Been a Bad Idea” and “This Definitely Was a Bad Idea.” The fourth track is just four minutes of the sound of Michael C. Hall eating Skittles. 

Judging from the songs, the musical will feature Hall, possibly wearing a cat costume, worrying whether his decision to be in the production will doom his career. He also evidently dies in the musical (which would definitely doom his career.) “This Definitely Was a Bad Idea” also has marketing people discussing whether selling 600 bags of Skittles at the musical constitutes a success for the stunt. 

Below, check out an earlier teaser in which Hall is already expressing reservations about doing the Skittles project. And his therapist and a random scarecrow aren’t helping. 

DDB is behind the campaign. The Broadway show is being produced by Smuggler. The teaser above was directed by Smuggler’s Randy Krallman, whose own candy advertising has included the legendary “Berries & Cream” spot for Starburst, starring Jack Ferver as the Little Lad.