Snickering
Mars Chocolate North America/ Snickers
Issue 49 | December 2018
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Worldwide David Lubars Chief Creative Officer New York Greg Hahn Executive Creative Directors Gianfranco Arena, Peter Kain, Tom Markham Senior Art Director Martin Staaf Junior Copywriter Min-Woo Park
Production Team
Director of Integrated Production David Rolfe Group Executive Director Amy Wertheimer Senior Producer Whitney Husnik Production Companies BBDO Studios, Flyquest
Other Credits
Senior Project Manager Amy Orgel Account Team Kirsten Flanik, Susannah Keller, Lisa Piliguian, Carrie White, Blake Maraoui, Danee Fields Senior Creative Technologist Filip Williander
Date
September 2018
Background
Snickers faces the same issue as most other brands: how to talk to an audience of Gen Z and Millennials, both of them generations that are tech-savvy and exist largely outside of the reach of traditional TV advertising?
Idea
These groups may not watch much traditional TV but they do watch Twitch.
tv, the world’s largest online streaming platform. It’s one of the fastest growing communities in the world and has a daily viewership that rivals CNN and MSNBC.
Swatting, the practice of pranking people by reporting dramatic but fake incidents at someone else’s location causing the Police to mobilise SWAT teams, is an incredibly dangerous hoax. Streamers are extra susceptible to this because people get to see it unfolding live.
Because it’s often used when someone is disappointed or angry at a streamer or opponent online, Snickers Hungry Hotline was created. This was a phone service that allowed people to snitch on their favorite streamers, teammates, opponents, and friends.
In response, a Snickers delivery man in a Hungry Hotline Van was despatched.
He would show up at the streamer’s house and bang loudly at the door.
When the pranked gamer opened the door, they weren’t greeted by a SWAT team but by a man in Snickers uniform telling them that they had been reported by an anonymous caller. The streamer was then handed a custom Snickers bar tied to gaming and specifically the game that the streamer was playing with terms like “PWNED, OWNED, REKT, INTING?” and reminded not to game when they’re hungry.
Results
To kickstart the campaign, the brand partnered with the eSport team Flyquest and their star player WildTurtle. Fan feedback was immediate and positive, achieving 917,000 impressions in the first week with a total of over 41,000 minutes watched and an average of 72% video completion amongst viewers on social channels. 208,000 minutes were watched in livestream on Twitch.
Our Thoughts
Here are some numbers. Out of a population of 325 million in the USA, 200 million are said to be gamers.
So, when Snickers sets out to target this community, they are trying to reach an audience the size of the entire population of Pakistan or three times the size of the population in the UK.
This, then, is not some little itty-bitty campaign but an example of clever and insightful mass communications.
Tapping into the rise and rise of Twitch and into the trending proclivity for sending the cops in LIVE to mess up your mate’s day, this is how to be at one with Gen Z and to become a much-loved brand.