Foods + Confectionaries, CPG
Brand Strategy, Experiential Campaign Design
Expanding Toxic Waste beyond novelty candy through a citywide purge of modern toxicity.
Ask
Expand Toxic Waste beyond niche fans to a broader adult audience—without losing its irreverent identity or relying on paid media.
Challenge
High awareness but low cultural relevance, in a crowded category where the brand couldn’t outspend—and risked being ignored.
Solution
Reframed “toxic” from a flavor into a cultural behavior, turning it into a participatory, city-scale experience that drove earned attention and engagement.
THE SITUATION
Toxic Waste was widely recognizable but commercially constrained.
As a smaller brand, it couldn’t outspend competitors or rely on traditional paid exposure.
It wasn’t going to win by showing up more. It had to show up differently.
THE TENSION
The brand had great awareness but lacked relevance.
Outside of core sour candy fans, the audience it needed to grow with had already tuned it out.
The product delivered. The brand needed to as well.
THE REFRAME
This wasn’t a media problem; this was a meaning problem.
Early on, I pushed the team to move beyond channel-first thinking and ask:
What would make people care enough to engage, without being asked?
CULTURAL INSIGHT #1
From bad bosses to worse relationships, “toxic” has become cultural shorthand.
People are drawn to chaotic, high-stimulation experiences, even as they try to escape the stress that comes with them.
“Toxic” isn’t just relatable. It’s participatory.
CULTURAL INSIGHT #2
By mapping behavior over time, we identified a recurring moment:
“Purge Season.”
A period marked by breakups, job changes, and emotional resets, when people actively try to let go of what’s no longer serving them.
March is also the time people are most likely to:
THE MOMENT
Chicago gave us the perfect stage.
Every St. Patrick’s Day, the Chicago River turns an almost radioactive green—right as Purge Season peaks.
For a brand called Toxic Waste, the moment wasn’t just relevant. It was ownable.
THE IDEA
Turn “toxic” into something people can actually purge.
Using the brand’s own cast of characters, we invited people to submit their emotional “toxic waste,” staged a fictional spill timed to the river’s transformation, and let the brand take the blame.
It worked because it balanced emotional truth with brand absurdity.
If you’re going to stage a toxic spill for a sour candy, subtlety is overrated.
THE ACTIVATION
From spill to shelf, the idea unfolded as a system.
I helped structure the experience so each phase built on the next, turning curiosity into participation, and participation into conversion.
The Outcome
Sometimes the smartest way for a brand to be taken seriously… is not to take itself too seriously at all.
Instead of asking people to care about candy, we connected the brand to something they were already experiencing.
The result:
- broader adult relevance
- high participation and earned attention
- a brand that moved from novelty to cultural conversation
Because while you can’t control the toxicity in your life—
you can control the one in your mouth.
This earned the brand broader adult appeal and reminded everyone that while you can’t control the toxicity in your group chat, but you can control the one in your mouth.
My Role
I identified the budget constraint early and guided the team away from channel-first thinking toward an earned-attention approach.
I led the development of the core insight, reframing “toxic” as a cultural behavior, and translated it into a strategically timed, participatory experience.
From shaping “Purge Season” to anchoring it in a real-world moment, I focused on building an idea that could punch above its weight, turning limited resources into disproportionate impact.