Perfect love? Hmm. Even fairy tales don’t venture past the first magic moments. Agency, Tombras, and the US lolly brand that features love messages, Sweethearts, have turned the reality that love – and especially young love – isn’t perfect into a campaign. And a way to turn the imperfect lollies that happen during production, those that are smudged, misprinted and sometimes misshapen, into heroes.
Tombras and Sweethearts have launched a limited-edition release of Situationship Boxes in time for Valentine’s Day. The specially designed boxes contain blurry, misprinted candies that are hard to read – Gen Z relationships. They’re perfect for gifting and available to purchase at SweetheartsCandies.com in the US. The brand is encouraging confused singles everywhere to get them while they last and give the gift as blurry as their relationships.
“Singles are taking ‘situationships’ to the next level this year, and Sweethearts is here for them,” stated Evan Brock, vice president of marketing for Sweethearts parent, Spangler. “The printing on Sweethearts isn’t always perfect. This is our way of embracing those imperfections in a way that taps into pop culture.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, situationships are romantic entanglements where the participants haven’t established the nature of their relationship. From a relationship with “that one person you meet up with whenever they happen to be in town” to “your go-to ‘plus one’ for couple-y events,” situationships have no labels, exclusivity or boundaries.
Research from Tinder, the world’s most popular dating app, indicates that young singles now consider the situationship to be a legitimate relationship status. The undefined and noncommittal situationship continues to evolve as people are less concerned about relationship outcomes and more interested in enjoying the process, according to Tinder data.
The word, situationship, recently ranked in the top four terms considered for the Oxford University Press’ 2023 Word of the Year.
Credits
Client: Spangler Candy Company (Sweehearts)
President: Kirk Vashaw
VP, Marketing: Evan Brock
Agency: Tombras
President: Dooley Tombras
Chief Creative Officer: Jeff Benjamin
Executive Creative Director: Avi Baliga
Creative Director: Donny Brunner
Associate Creative Directors: Christine Petrosky & Brennen Cooke
Chief Client Officer: Ashley Butturini
Account Supervisor: Reise Kitts
Producer: Renee Safir
Senior Strategist: Adriane Hershey
Social Media Brand Manager: Morgan Glaub
