How do you transform a popular children’s candy bar into a snack food for teens?
Problem:
Solution:
Snickers sales were slowing down.
The candy bar segment enjoyed robust growth when the Baby Boomers were children but by 1980 the Boomers were grown up the and the candy bar segment was experiencing slower growth rates due to the reduced number of children.
Teens and young adults represented a much bigger consumer segment than that represented by children but…
Teens and young adults are far more likely to eat snack foods than candy bars because they are perceived as the less healthy option.
Reposition Snickers as a snack that satisfies the between-meal hunger of active teenagers and young adults.
Launch Campaign (1981)
The first Snickers “hunger satisfaction” TV commercials were directed and produced by the Maysles brothers, a world renowned documentary team best known for “Gimme Shelter,” which documented the Rolling Stones’ 1969 U.S. tour. The commercials were shot on 16 mm film, rather than 35 mm, to give the commercials the look of cinema verite. The commercials were unscripted and featured teenagers who were not actors.
Follow-up Campaign (1983)
A little more than a year later, a new pool of commercials was produced that featured teenagers, but also included young men. All commercials featured non-actors and were unscripted.
The Olympic Sponsorship Campaign
The 1984 Olympic Games were held in the U.S. and they were the first games to accept corporate sponsorship. Mars Inc. paid $5 million to ensure global reach for their new M&Ms and Snickers brand strategies (happiness and hunger satisfaction, respectively). For Snickers, this was also an opportunity to draw real Olympic athletes into the advertising.
The first Snickers Olympic spot served the duel purpose of announcing the Snickers sponsorship of the 1984 Olympic Games and featured a sales promotion. It featured Mike Eruzione, the captain of the USA 1980 Olympic Hockey Team that won the gold, in an upset defeat of the USSR team. The promotional spot was scripted. All of the subsequent spots featuring members of the Summer and Winter USA Olympic Teams were unscripted.
Agency: Ted Bates New York
You’re Not You When You’re Hungry
The Snickers “Hunger Satisfaction” campaign contributed to significant sales grown, cementing Snickers as the #1 selling candy bar in the U.S., but it wasn’t until 2010 that a new campaign, still rooted in the benefit of hunger satisfaction, took Snickers advertising to a new level: explaining the emotional benefit of hunger satisfaction. In the 2010 Super Bowl game, BBDO launched “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry,” introducing one of the most popular advertising campaigns in the US. It was successfully rolled out worldwide.
