Dive Brief:

• Sweetarts candy teamed up with fashion designer Christian Siriano to bring its "Be Both" campaign to the runway. Siriano designed a couture clothing look inspired by Sweetarts products using textured crepe fabric, according to a company news release.
• The design celebrates the freedom to be "more than one thing," the brand message of the current Sweetarts advertising campaign. In kind, the pastel outfit is a half fringy dress, half pantsuit. The fashion line debuted at a private event in New York City last week.
• In April, Sweetarts unveiled a new marketing campaign targeting Gen Z, which encourages people to "Be Both," and highlights the multidimensional attributes of each person's character.

Dive Insight:

This partnership helps further cement the "Be Both" campaign, an effort inspired by Pew Research data showing that Gen Z is the most diverse generation to date and rejects one-dimensional depictions of their identities. The campaign, which was created with the Ferrara Candy Company brand's creative agency Duncan Channon, looks to break one-dimensional stereotypes and illustrate how a consumer can be both shy and a partygoer, for example.

Fashion designer Christian Siriano is known for his boundary-pushing styles and gives the candy brand a positive, forward-thinking association in the minds of consumers. With more than 1 million Instagram followers, Siriano not only gives the brand's tagline a fresh look, but he also pushes the branded message to a massive audience online, further extending the campaign's reach beyond the private event in New York.

"It's impressive to see a candy brand really think about the world today, and want to be as inclusive and diverse as our society is becoming," Siriano said in a statement. "This project was such a great fit for me because this is how I design and live my life every day! Anyone can be anything, and even candy can be more than one thing."

As younger consumers expect more purposeful marketing from brands, the demand for messaging that reflects the more complex identities of Gen Z and other audience segments is high. Candy companies, in particular, can win by starting early relationships with these consumers as online grocery sales hurts impulse sales, as reported by Ad Age.