Social Media Marketing Campaign: "The Summer I Turned Pretty", Sour Patch Kids & Swedish Fish
Sour. Sweet. Gone.
This is a fake marketing campaign celebrating the final season of The Summer I Turned Pretty, the Amazon Prime series based on Jenny Han’s bestselling book trilogy. This page showcases my campaign process—from brainstorming to developing the idea, to a full marketing strategy partnering Sour Patch Kids with the show’s themes and visuals.
Concept Development
Jenny Han’s trilogy includes The Summer I Turned Pretty (2009), It’s Not Summer Without You (2010), and We’ll Always Have Summer (2011). Each season of the TV adaptation follows one book. Season 3, releasing weekly from July 16 to September 17, covers the final book in the series. Belly, the main character, is caught in a love triangle with family friends’ brothers Conrad and Jeremiah, while grappling with the loss and love surrounding their mom, Susannah, who battled breast cancer.
Belly’s favorite candy is Sour Patch Kids—a small but important detail mentioned in both the books and the series. In Season 2, Jeremiah insists her favorite is Swedish Fish and gives her a bag. Unaware, Belly grabs the Sour Patch Kids instead and smiles, saying “my favorite,” while Jeremiah unknowingly hands her the wrong candy. While Belly does enjoy Swedish Fish, her favorite candy is Sour Patch Kids; the candies reflect the choice in brothers.
Color Symbolism in Season 3
In Season 3 promos, red represents Conrad, blue represents Jeremiah, and Belly is often seen in combinations of both (purple). Taylor Swift’s “Red” plays in the trailer with lyrics like “loving him was red” and “losing him was blue,” reinforcing the emotional tone and color connections. Throughout the season, Belly is seen wearing red when thinking about or interacting with Conrad—like red PJs, red glasses, and red in promo photos where Conrad is always looking at her.
Ad Production:
This campaign uses the color associations and iconic slogan “Sour. Sweet. Gone.” to link the characters to candy:
Conrad = Red Sour Patch Kid (Sour); Belly = Purple Sour Patch Kid (Sweet); Jeremiah = Blue Swedish Fish (Gone)
The rollout would follow the show’s release schedule:|
July 16 (Premiere): Sour – Focused on Conrad
August 13 (Mid-Season): Sweet – Focused on Belly
September 17 (Finale): Gone – Focused on Jeremiah leaving and Belly’s choice
Instagram graphics background the color of the colors associated for the character bleeding into the other colors.
Promote Team Conrad ("Bonrad" ship) vs Team Jeremiah ("Jellyfish" ship) on packaging with red sour patch for Conrad with a picture of him and Belly on the packaging, and a blue swedish fish for Jeremiah with a picture of Belly and Jeremiah.
Vision board
Social media mockups
After I finished making my campaign, I saw there was already a campaign for TSITP partnering with Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish. Welp, I guess the #1 marketing rule is to see if it's been done before! For MY campaign I would've made the Swedish Fish blue the Sour Patch Kids only red and used The Summer I Turned Pretty logo on my posts! The First two images from left to right are my own creation, and the image on the right is on Amazon.