We are within days of Halloween, but the Covid-19 pandemic has dimmed the prospects for many children regarding the holiday. Enter Mars. Halloween is one of the biggest days of the year for the candy behemoth. Necessity is the mother of invention, and in this case, the company’s chief digital officer Sandeep Dadlani and his team have developed a method to save Halloween called Treat Town. This is part of his broader strategy to make the company 100 times faster with its digital engine.
Mars Treat Town
Credit Mars
Treat Town is first-of-its-kind digital platform to virtualize trick-or-treat experience to have all the fun of Halloween while being safe at home. It has extended candy giving and receiving throughout the month of October. Dadlani notes that the pandemic, though tragic, has been a source of remarkable innovation, especially through digital means.
Mars user-centricity teams interact with customers virtually every week. The team came to know that their customers were worried about the Halloween celebration this year. With a huge opportunity for innovation, Dadlani and his team chose to solve one of the major problems faced by their customers: how to celebrate Halloween safely amidst pandemic.
“One of the problems that we wanted to solve was Halloween because consumers were worried about [the inability to celebrate the holiday safely]. It’s a tradition that everybody wants to save. People enjoy trick-or-treating. So, we conceptualized a digital platform.”
Treat Town offers an ability to digitally decorate houses virtually and choose to be a candy giver or trick-or-treater, while visiting or inviting friends and family from all over the country virtually. Virtual candy credits can be redeemed for real candy, and virtual tricks and mini games can be played to earn spooky points. Moreover, the typical boundaries of one’s hometown or neighborhood become less meaningful. Dadlani notes, “We could trick-or-treat my uncle’s house in Florida, something that I could never do.”
Romain Apert is Mars Global Chief Information Officer of Mars Wrigley, one of the company’s two biggest business units, and was involved in the development and roll out of Treat Town. He sees added creativity during this period of crisis, which has led to new ways of thinking about innovation. “Before we were chasing north stars, but now, we are chasing shooting stars,” said Apert. “When you chase north stars, you build a culture that is aiming at trying to be right. When you chase shooting stars, you need to choose to be accurate.”
He highlights that the company is building an ecosystem of partners to go to market with on this idea and other related ideas. Necessity is the mother of invention, but Apert is betting that when the necessity is no longer there, the invention will still apply. Apert noted, “Post-Covid, we will still be able to use Treat Town. Halloween will forever have a digital component, we believe.” Dadlani added, “Halloween, or perhaps all celebrations and smiles could be enhanced with a digital component. This platform is only the beginning.”
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. His has written two bestselling books, moderates the Technovation podcast series, and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.