Six weeks in to the biggest launch of its 75-year-history, M&M’s customer demographics appear to be slowly changing toward more adults without children.
The big picture presents an interesting trend story for one of the best perceived brands in the country, starting with M&M’s increase of current customers. This year, according to BrandIndex data, M&M’s has been tracking a couple of percentage points higher than last year in garnering current customers among adults who normally buy candy.
That percentage went from about 38% in 2016 to currently 40%, and even reached 42% a couple of weeks after its first caramel variety ads began airing on TV on May 7th.
Yet, the caramel launch may have impacted M&M’s in another way, according to the Profiles data: in the past 28 days, 14% of their customers are living with children under the age of 18 versus 24% of candy purchasers for all of 2016.
In other words, M&M’s may have cracked a whole new market – with help from its new caramel variety – adults without young children.
M&M’s – along with the personalities of each product’s “color” – have become ubiquitous comic characters across the brand’s marketing and M&M’s World merchandise stores. While the new caramel campaign may have debuted on the MTV Movie and TV Awards, it also rolled out onto popular mainstream and late night talk shows, and that scheduling may be opening up this new customer base.
M&M's Current Customers
