Sour Patch “Happy Being Single”

September 16, Michael Elias

In the movies, the protagonist finds love and lives happily ever after. They don’t divorce, they don’t disagree on who will watch the children and quit their job, and they remain in the “honeymoon phase” even after their real, well, honeymoon.

Real life isn’t so simple. Real life has expectations and those expectations come from the individual, but they also come from their family and friends. Unless you’re the type of person who is naturally charming, most people, especially those that are considered Gen Z, find themselves to be single for the majority of their life. And the truth is, even after someone finds love, it does not necessarily mean they are going to be happier. Being in a relationship means new responsibilities and time commitments, and it also can evolve into a state of codependency. Being truly in love means that you rely on your partner because you know they have your back, which can lead to other problems down the line. When you’re in a relationship, you do not improve as much in the areas you value inherently because you are focusing on growing as a couple together - not as an individual.

With this idea in mind, the brand Sour Patch teamed up with the Advertising Agency, Brilliant & Million, in Bangkok, Thailand to launch a campaign with the goal of “Changing the space of love into the space of singleness to recover the happiness for the single people.” The idea lay in the fact that Sour Patch was created to bring happiness to all individuals everyday, which includes single people. What’s to say this candy brand can’t solve a single person’s lack-of-love depression? Well, in my opinion, they can’t, but to my happy surprise, the results show otherwise.

The campaign had multiple steps. First, on Valentine’s Day, many candy brands market their boxes of candy as “lover gift boxes” in stores to appeal to couples during Valentine's Day season. To counter this, Sour Patch released their boxes of candy during this time as “gift boxes for single people” to appeal to their single lovers audience. To be fair, I do think this makes buying candy for yourself on Valentine’s Day less depressing. Sometimes a simple change is the most effective. The next step they took was pivoting from marketing their social media posts for Valentine’s Day as “how to make Valentine’s Day perfect” to “how to survive Valentine’s Day happily.” And finally, Sour Patch advertised an online activity for single lover contestants online where all the winners got to watch the Thai movie “Low Season” where they watched the rom-com and learned about how to be happy with their singleness. It sounds silly on paper, but I feel like such an act of kindness can actually help single people during a time where most people feel depressed if they are not dating during Valentine’s Day season.

The results? This Sour Patch campaign helped 26 million single people in Thailand be happier about their singleness. How they judged this is another question, but with that high of a number there is no doubt that their campaign did indeed have a positive impact.

This isn’t the only effort that Sour Patch has done in the past. One of these efforts was a contest for writing a Wattpad about being single and finding the joy behind it. Personally, I found this to be heart-warming, but I have to point out that the ending of these stories mostly ended up with the protagonists falling into relationships anyway… So I am not sure what the message they are trying to spread? Maybe that if you don’t chase after love, love will come to you? I rather have stories about self-improvement and self-love instead, but in the end, I guess these Wattpads were written by love-starved teenage writers after all, so I can’t really blame them. Overall, the campaign was a success.

The grand takeaway from this is that if more agencies and brands tried to fight against the problems found in the status quo regarding the normalcy of everyday life that everyone can relate to, then the world would be a better place. Even though Sour Patch’s campaign for single awareness is objectively childish, they made an impact on a large amount of people in only a month. If more big-name brands than a candy company like Sour Patch had a similar mindset, I am sure that the results would travel worldwide and spread overall better mental health for those not in relationships.

Now that Sour Patch has done their job, what about you, Reese’s?