Creative consistency / This campaign is yet another example of Snickers executing against its multi-award-winning creative platform, You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.
Other examples include Australia’s 2016 The Hungerithm campaign, which saw chocolate bars given away at different prices according to the nation’s mood, as assessed via an online algorithm, and 2017’s Who Are You?, an on-pack promotion which played on different words for hunger.
Since 2010 Snickers has been developing its ‘hunger’ positioning by consistently delivering the same message in its comms. This repeated messaging builds mental availability for the brand which, crucially in a category where impulse purchases are the norm, increases the likelihood that a consumer will choose the brand in a buying situation.
Oh so refreshing / Finding new ways to execute this creative platform is a key challenge for Snickers. As Matt Pearce, senior planner at Melbourne-based Clemenger BBDO, told us when we spoke to him about The Hungerithm: ‘We had to tell the brand story in a new way, to give people a stronger reason for purchasing. It was about finding a way to twist the platform which people are familiar with a love.’ This campaign is a great example of a compelling, creative variant on the same idea that doesn’t feel tired or repetitive.
Crack the code / Despite being styled as a spoof insurance campaign, each component leverages the brand’s distinctive assets such that it is recognisably Snickers. As described by Jenni Romaniuk, co-author of How Brands Grow: Part 2, distinctive assets are ‘non-brand name elements, such as colours, logos, characters and fonts that can trigger the brand for category buyers’.
Here the TV ad, OOH and social assets, in-store activations and campaign website each feature the Snickers logo, red parallelogram, and product packshot associated so closely with the brand. For Snickers, these codes are so strong that it can even produce an ad parodying another product category, and still clearly reinforce the brand’s identity.
For more on Snickers, read the Contagious case study here.
