At Coyne PR, we are always in search of the big idea. It’s what motivates us. It’s what gets us up in the morning and keeps us up at night.

Welcome to our video series What’s Behind the Big Idea in which we take a look back at some of our favorite activations. In S1 E1 we look back to the 60th anniversary of the iconic board game, Candy Land.

Ideation started with data that led us down the path to the worlds and characters within Candy Land. And it turned out to be the wrong path.

Every year on Take Your Kids to Work Day, we like to really put the kids to work. In this particular case, we held a brainstorm with all the Coyne kids who attended. Makes sense, right? Kids! Games! Candy!

Our kids knew the game very well. Yet we realized the attraction to Candy Land was less about the characters and worlds within the game than it was the colorful, winding path. So we changed our path and started to think in another direction.

Inspired by the little kids, the big idea came from Big Murph (aka Murph, aka Brian Murphy) when he noticed that the colorful path of Candy Land looked an awful lot like the iconic Lombard Street in San Francisco. With big ideas come big challenges. Now that we had this big, crazy idea, we had to figure out how to make this fantasy a reality.

Ideas don’t mean much without execution. We had to not only think big. We had to act big. Logistical nightmares notwithstanding, we managed to pull off the unthinkable and turned Lombard Street into Candy Land for a day. Actually, less than a day. It had to be set up and broken down – with a big media event in the middle – within ten hours. Ten hours!

Media swarmed upon this activation. And without any other marketing support, the game saw a tremendous lift in sales – all stemming from the earned media generated.

Enjoy the video as Tim Schramm, Rich Lukis, Nicole Centinaro and of course Brian Murphy (aka Murph, aka Big Murph) share their recollections of Candy Land’s 60th anniversary. And learn more about the Coyne PR Toy Team.