By Tracey La Spina – Managing Partner – Colony Group
If you’d told me that a Cadbury Pascall Clinker – a lolly older than most brands in supermarket aisles-would become the must-have item for my 10-year-old’s Class Christmas Party, I would have laughed.
But then came the TikTok trend.
Suddenly, Clinkers weren’t just a nostalgic treat. They were a cultural moment. A status symbol. A conversation starter. And, apparently, the deciding factor in something as serious as who my daughter was going to marry-depending entirely on the colour she bit into.
As a mum, I was bemused. As a marketer, I was fascinated.
Because the moment I found myself visiting four supermarkets, all completely sold out, and then being told to come back Thursday on restock day, which my daughter insisted we did – I recognised something very powerful.
A brand doesn’t need to be new to become newly relevant.
And sometimes, the spark that reignites a brand isn’t a multi-million-dollar campaign, a product extension, or a shiny new collaboration.
Sometimes… it’s a 10-second TikTok video and a generation discovering something for the first time.
Here are the top 3 things we can learn from this example, a timely reminder for every Brand Leader:
- The Clinkers Phenomenon Is a Masterclass in Organic Cultural Relevance
Marketers often chase the next flavour, the next SKU, the next seasonal twist. Teams spend fortunes on R&D, innovation pipelines, and “the next big thing,” hoping something will break through.
But Clinkers didn’t change a thing.
The world simply paid attention again, and that attention came from the audience, not the brand.
- No reformulation
- No packaging overhaul
- No price promotions
- No celebrity partnerships
Just a simple, silly, delightful trend about guessing the colour inside the shell of a lolly… and a generation turning it into social currency.
When a 10-year-old starts making decisions about friendships and future husbands, based on the inside colour of a Clinker, you know you’re witnessing a brand moment money can’t buy.
And here’s the kicker: Marketing teams can invest millions trying to create this moment through product reinvention… when what often works is simply reinventing the marketing instead.
- Virality Doesn’t Require Reinvention. It Requires Connection
The Clinkers craze proves that in the modern marketing ecosystem:
- Reach = audience-driven
- Relevance = culture-driven
- Resurgence = community-driven
As brands, we don’t always need to push harder. Sometimes, we need to listen better.
And here’s where many brands get it wrong:
They try to manufacture virality through overly produced influencer content, scripted “UGC,” or glossy campaigns pretending to be organic. But consumers can spot a contrived activation a mile away.
What worked for Clinkers was the opposite, pure authenticity. Real kids. Real reactions. Real play. No brief. No polish. No performance.
Because when you understand how people naturally play, share, create, and interact with your product in the real world, you unlock the power of real influence:
- Organic crave-ability
- Social desirability
- Effortless shareability
These aren’t just outcomes. They’re accelerants.
And they happen when marketing, creator or influencer content feels genuinely organic, not orchestrated. When the brand amplifies culture instead of trying to force it. When the audience leads – and the brand follows.
- In today’s New World – Marketing doesn’t have to cost a fortune!
We don’t always need massive production costs and huge advertising budgets to re-ignite brand interest. Creating currency amongst a generation of non-users is about ‘tapping into’ their cultural world’. Putting the power in the audiences’ hands to drive authentic, real brand connections and variability momentum.
The fun and more cost effective the ideation, the happier people are to play along, including me! 😉
Today’s world belongs to brands that can move with culture, not behind it.
Because virality isn’t random. It’s architected. It’s nurtured. It’s engineered through understanding.
And as the Clinkers craze proves: The simplest ideas often spark the loudest results.
At Colony, our creative, digital and social teams work at the intersection of cultural signals, platform mechanics, and human behaviour generating ideas & marketing plans centred around what works in the New World!
Your brand is never too old, too familiar, or too “traditional” to become the hero again.
Embrace it, ignite it! Light up your brand power! 2026 is the year to start doing things differently! Talk to your agency, or reach out and challenge us, to help you!
Sometimes, what you truly need is:
- a fresh lens,
- a new world approach
- a cultural insight,
- or an unexpected moment of rediscovery.
Give your product back to the audience. Let them play with it. Let them reinvent it. Let them make it theirs.
Because they will, and when they do, it will spread faster than any ad campaign you could buy. All you need to do is use your dollars to amplify the spread.
And for those wondering…
Yes, after a week of searching, I finally found three bags of Clinkers.
And yes, my daughter was ecstatic.
But the marketer in me? I was equally thrilled.
Because this wasn’t just a lolly hunt. It was a powerful reminder:
Brand magic doesn’t always come from us. Sometimes, it comes from the audience who love the product enough to bring it back to life.
