Berries and Cream
The insight
Candy ads are wallpaper; to launch a strange flavour you need to be impossible to forget, not tastefully persuasive.
The idea
A Victorian 'little lad' erupts into a manic, ritualistic chant about berries and cream, with no logic or explanation.
The Stupid/Smart of it
Stupid: Answer a candy brief with an unhinged pilgrim-child chanting nonsense at strangers, and never explain the joke.
Smart: Unhinged for a candy ad (surprising); a weird flavour earning a weird, unforgettable chant is oddly right (inevitable).
Why it works
Weakly ownable at first — any brand can go surreal — but the Little Lad became a Starburst-owned character/meme. The strangeness is the moat.
An earworm chant + a rewatch-demanding character → dormant for 14 years, then 350M+ TikTok views in the 2021 revival.
The way in
The devices behind this one, from our library of ways in: