AUSSIE BUILDERS

Silver Spike
TitleAUSSIE BUILDERS
BrandMARS CHOCOLATE AUSTRALIA
Product / ServiceSNICKERS
CategoryA06. Events & Experiential (incl. stunts)
EntrantCLEMENGER BBDO MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company CLEMENGER BBDO MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency CLEMENGER BBDO MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Media Agency STARCOM MEDIAVEST GROUP Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
PR Agency PROPELLER PR Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Production Company THE SWEET SHOP Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
James McGrath Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Creative Chairman
Ant Keogh Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Executive Creative Director
Andre Hull Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Copywriter
Lee Sunter Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Art Director
Jennifer Chin Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Group Account Director
Tim Clark/Berlin Abraham And Sam Ayre Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Account Director And Account Management
Lisa Moro Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Senior Producer
Matt Pearce Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Strategic Planner
Michael Derepas Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Planning Director
Chris Baker Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Social Manager
Nick Kelly The Sweet Shop Director
Wilf Sweetland The Sweet Shop Managing Director
Edward Pontifex The Sweet Shop Executive Producer
Nikolas Aulich The Sweet Shop Producer
Andrew Dunlop/Chas Mackinnon And Jimmy Harmsworth Freelancers Cameraman
Graeme Pereira The Butchery Editor
Eugene Richards The Refinery Flame Artist
Matthew Graham Mars Chocolate Australia Marketing Director
Brad Cole Mars Chocolate Australia Group Marketing Manager
Stevo Williams Flagstaff Studios Sound Designer/Engineer

The Campaign

The Snickers 'You're Not You When You're Hungry' campaign is a global phenomenon, but often relies on celebrity status to gain attention. Our PR challenge was to create a piece of communication that got talked about, but had no celebrity. So to ignite conversations about Snickers we tapped into a poignant societal tension. We definitely hit a nerve. Our idea involved staging a stunt to give the campaign platform an unexpected twist. We took over a construction site in Melbourne and flipped the stereotypical behaviour of the builders by getting them to call out statements about empowerment and equality to the unsuspecting public below. We filmed the reactions, uploaded it to YouTube, seeded our video to key social influencers and media outlets and waited. PR was central to our strategy and media coverage was crucial to our success. It worked. With no paid media support, in just over 60 hours we amassed over 1 million views, got featured on every national breakfast TV show including hundreds of national and international media publishers like Time, Fox News, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and Forbes. We got memed and parodied within 24 hours, shared 680,000 times and sparked worldwide debate about gender equality. Within 2 weeks, 3.5 million people had viewed it in 194 countries. We generated over $11 million in earned media and a total of 238 million earned media impressions. Result? The most social engaged campaign in Snickers history.

The Brief

Our goal was to spark conversations not just about the brand, but topics that were culturally relevant. We knew we'd have to skate pretty close to the edge and potentially be contentious in order for the topic to have enough emotion built into it to incite mass interest and spark conversations quickly. We wanted to provoke people to have an opinion and feel comfortable voicing it. But it was still a brand activity after all, so we wanted people to have positive opinion about the brand at the end. So there was a lot of pressure on what we'd do.

Results

Within 24 hours Snickers had been discussed, debated and parodied across the globe. Everyone had an opinion and boy did they want to share it. We gained editorial coverage on major national and international TV networks, online blogs, newspapers and radio. In 2 weeks it generated over $11 million in earned media, 238 million earned media impressions, 680,000 shares and 3.5 million views. We were the most shared video on YouTube in Australia and made the top five globally. Making it the most socially engaged campaign in Snickers history. Due to the stunts' viral success, all paid advertising was pulled and we finished up with an ROI of $441 earned media value for every $1 spent. And best of all Snickers came out on top with positive sentiment of our controversial video of 60%.

Execution

We took over a construction site in the Melbourne business district - a destination of over 100,000 daily commuting workers. The builders on the site were replaced with actors, we made their behaviour unexpected and surprising, by having them shout out empowering statements to unsuspecting members of the public. To be successful, the content had to resonate with our audience and be easily shareable across multiple platforms to maximise exposure. The video was uploaded to YouTube, then distributed as content to key blogs, websites and seeded with influential mass media outlets to generate a groundswell to ignite conversation. And it did just that. We allowed 2 days to pass before engaging paid social placements so that the video could be discovered naturally and passed around by opinion formers. However due to the viral success of the campaign, we cancelled the placements within 48 hours.

The Situation

The Snickers 'You're Not You When You're Hungry' campaign platform comes to life effortlessly in TV. The use of celebrities generates huge talkability in mass media. However, celebrities are expensive, which makes extending the campaign beyond TV cost prohibitive for a small market like Australia. Therefore, our challenge was how to expand our presence outside of TV and find 'new news' about our well known campaign platform. With limited budget, a celebrity was out of the question. And to deliver a fresh take on the campaign, we'd have to break or at least permutate the Snickers TV construct.

The Strategy

Instead of demonstrating the expected 'negative' side of hunger, such as on your poor football ability or failing to pick up girls, we set out to refresh the platform and begin a conversation about when other types of people 'are not themselves'. Our strategy was to inject a sense of surprise and unexpectedness into the established Snickers platform by tapping into the cultural tension of gender equality and leverage widely held stereotypes. The humour of the brand meant the topic had to be approachable, hold social currency and encourage people to voice their opinions. Once the thinking had been locked down, we agreed we needed to create a bold and brave stunt that absolutely embodied the Snickers idea, but executed with an Australian twist. Our surprise tactics would get both the media and our audiences to re-appraise the successful but familiar Snickers advertising platform and put us back on our consumer's radar.