Mars Direct (the candy bar…not the planet) chooses imc2

Mars today named a digital shop — imc2 based in Dallas — as the lead agency for all strategic planning, creative and media work on its customized candy unit Mars Direct, as well as for My M&M’s and My Dove brands.

Queue up Adweek for the details:

“The win marks the first time the division of the candy maker has selected an online shop to handle all media and planning duties, according to imc2, Dallas. It reflects a shift among marketers, where digital is emerging as the focus of marketing campaigns, the agency said.

“Our goal in conducting this review was to identify a single firm that could be a partner to Mars Direct regardless of medium,” said Jim Cass, gm of Mars Direct, in a statement.

Mars, Hackettstown, N.J., launched its customized candy business in 2006 with the help of DraftFCB, Chicago. Consumers could visit Mymms.com, then choose M&M’s by color and order personalized message printed on the candy shell. The concept was novel enough to persuade candy lovers to pay about $9 for a pound of M&M’s. Soon Mars expanded its capacity to meet personalized orders as demand grew.

Mymms.com initially handled seasonal messages for birthdays, holidays and special events. Today that business prints logos of Major League Baseball teams on M&M’s and has a business-to-business outreach for printing corporate logos on the candy pieces. Mars spent nearly $15 million on Mymms.com last year, up from about $5 million in 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.”

I guess it could be significant in regard to it being a digital shop that is leading it — but realistically, I’d assume most of the orders for this kind of stuff would come from the internet anyway, right?  Looks like Mars just decided to cut a step out by naming a digital shop as the lead agency (this is assuming that in no way does DraftFCB ever get considered a digital agency of course — which by their track record, pretty much fits the bill.)

Like the comments for the Dell account — $15 million may seem a lot — but it is including the media spend — so it is not all that big an account…unless they use it as a stepping stone to get their foot in the door and then start driving the direction of the main brands — not just the smaller subsidiaries.