Online & Digital

Sticky Searchuations

Mars Confectionery

Issue 50 | February 2019

Agency

Clemenger BBDO Melbourne

Creative Team

Executive Creative Director Stephen de Wolf Creative team Lauren Moran, Fraser Nelson

Production Team

Senior Interactive Producer Cynthia Bons Technical Director Sylvain Simao Senior Full-Stack Developer Todd Armstrong Full-stack Developers Locky Keaney, Caterina Dattoma Tester Sonali Bhattacharya Interactive Designer Brendan Sharman

Other Credits

Planning Director Matt Pearce Comms Planner Jason Olive National Account Lead AJ Coyne Business Director Billy Jones Account Manager Harriette Curtis Head of PR Nick Zonnios Client Marketing Director Suzanne Morrison Marketing Manager Elly Harper Assistant Brand Manager Anna Pitt

Date

November 2018 – January 2019

Background

To attract a Gen Y/Z audience, Mars Bar was repositioned as a big, bold chocolate that can give people the positive lift to deal with the everyday challenges life seems to throw their way.

The challenge was to extend the new brand platform, Enough Chocolate To Deal With Anything, beyond the TV execution and make it relevant to day-to-day life.

Idea

When Gen Y/Z needs to ‘deal with something’, they don’t ask Mum and Dad, they ask Google. So, the idea was to partner with Google so that when people were searching about how to deal with a problem, they got Enough Chocolate To Deal With Anything.

If they searched terms like ‘How to get mattress out of pool?’, ‘How to remove tattoo of ex’s name?’ or even ‘How to stop dad from flirting with my girlfriend’, they were served with a Google Link Ad.

This took users to a website, where the first lucky visitors were rewarded with a year’s supply of Mars Bars to help them ‘deal with it’.

With the power of Google, campaign assets could be matched to Australia’s actual daily search behaviour.

So, if the country was gearing up for an election, dealing with a heat wave or struggling with what to get their loved ones for Christmas, Mars Bar intercepted them on Google with timely ad units further enticing them to get Enough Chocolate to Deal With It.

Results

Though executed on a budget below US$100,000 media budget, the campaign achieved over 17 million impressions with 1,068,651 “disrupted searches”.

Over 4,000 Mars Bars were delivered to help people deal with anything

Our Thoughts

I love this because 99% of all search-related ads are staggeringly dull, as if simply being able to answer the search query is enough.

It ain’t. Because we are all so used to online ads being unimaginative, uninventive and uninteresting, any brand thinking it might try being a little bit imaginative, inventive and interesting etc is going to get noticed. As it happens, Mars Bar has been exceedingly I, I and I and deserves all the high scores in awareness and relevance it will get.

I also love it because it’s funnier than the TV ad (boy goes to art class, discovers his mum is the nude model) on a fraction of the budget and suggests there’s a lot of great work to come from the new “help when things get awkward” positioning.