Kate Lynham

M&M's: Sweet Moves and Mirror Experience

‘It’s the perfect pairing of experiences. One where you can get up close and personal with a single M&M character, and another where you literally become 1000s of M&Ms.’

Kate Lynham, Creative Director, UNIT9

‘It’s been really wonderful to work with the MRG and together create two experiences that appeal to a wide range of audiences. The best thing about the project is watching as young kids enjoy the experience, and hearing their laughter as they dance and spin, without a care in the world! The project has presented a number of challenges, namely producing two intensive softwares and installing them during a pandemic. The team and Client have been wonderful though, and we’ve really come together under the pressure.’

Jess Deacon, Producer, UNIT9

The background

As part of an ongoing partnership with Mars Retail Group, UNIT9 has created a series of playful installations for M&M’s stores across the world to inject some fun and encourage shoppers to interact with the brand and its iconic characters. The installations needed to centre around movement, as well as provide users with a shareable takeaway to maximise engagement. We also needed to integrate cutting-edge technology in order to bring the M&Ms retail experience into a new immersive era.

The execution

Two of our experiences are now live in-store. The first, ‘Mirror’, allows guests to take over the face of an M&M’s character by transforming their reflection into their candy counterpart. Any movements or facial expressions that users make into the Mirror are reflected back at them as their matching M&M, providing them with a unique shareable at the end of the experience to send to their friends and family.

We used emotion detection to find each user’s matching character – those who smile a lot are likely to be paired with an M&M with a cheerful disposition such as Yellow, whereas those with a frown may be matched with Ms Brown.

We built the characters from scratch specifically for the experience. One of the most challenging parts of the development was to finesse the blend shapes of the models so that we could get the closest match possible between the user’s expression and what gets reflected back as their M&M’s character.

The second installation, ‘Sweet Moves’, is an experience that promotes dance by using body-tracking technology to turn users into an avatar made up of M&M’s lentils. Guests are able to choose a backing track based on the type of dance they prefer – from super chilled, to high tempo – as well as select their favourite M&M’s colours and background. As the tune plays, guests can bust their moves in front of a screen and watch as their body movements are matched in M&M form.

We incorporated hidden easter egg moves to add some extra fun, such as a tornado effect when users wave their arms, and an explosion when users dance with serious energy. At the end of the experience, guests can select their favourite 10 second clip to download and post on socials.

The results

The Mirror and Sweet Moves installations are now live at M&M’s World in London, the Gloria store in Berlin, the Disney Springs store in Florida, and the Mall of America store in Minnesota. We’re excited to be bringing the installations to New York very soon.

With nearly 500,000 visitors trying the experiences across all sites so far, the activations have proved to be a highly successful and well received addition to the M&M’s retail experience.