The Campaign

We all do stupid things when we’re hungry. With the average person spending 4+ hours a day on their smartphone, many stupid things happen on a handset. Snickers’ platform of ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ is well established across many mainstream channels, but we needed to break through media inertia and literally put our message into the hand of the hungry. We hijacked the mobile hub of the hungry. We created 3 completely useless but amusingly intriguing apps, sounding (almost) legitimate to any haplessly hungry phone user, which once opened revealed themselves as an instant free Snickers voucher. ‘Liquishield’ - the app that waterproofs your phone. Trusted by sailors and midwives all over the world. ‘Is My Phone On?’ – Answering that tough tech questions easily. ‘1000 Silent Ringtones’ - Why put your phone on silent when you can put it on the silent version of your favourite song!

Creative Execution

To prove LiquiShield’s marine prowess we partnered with NZ’s top fishing website to create organic endorsements. We then stickered locations like fountains, wharves, fishing clubs and one badly-placed park bench in the firing line of a particularly enthusiastic sprinkler. A 15” 1000 Silent Ringtones video ran in cinemas to hit people before they cracked into buckets of popcorn. Well-known radio personalities created native content on national stations, and posters popped up in the library of NZ’s biggest university so hard-working students didn’t miss out on their favourite tunes. We’re very safety conscious, so Is My Phone On ran as a PSA in the motoring section of NZ’s highest-read newspaper so people were able to tell whether their phones were on before driving. Digital screens ran in the departure lounges of Auckland Airport. All apps were underpinned with solid digital and Social activity, specifically targeted to the theme of each app.

In less than a week almost 2,700 people proved that they shouldn’t app when they are hungry, and downloaded our completely useless apps, receiving an instant voucher for a free Snickers – redeemable immediately, delivering Snickers straight into the hands of the hungry. Over 70% went on to redeem their vouchers. We then let the rest of our consumers in on the joke with a reveal video in the theme of an app review, garnering hilarious Social responses from our audience. Overall we reached over 1.4 million Kiwis (don’t laugh, that’s almost a third of our population) with a media budget of just $45k, increased sales by 36.8% over that period, and of course saved 2,666 people from potentially making bigger mistakes while hungry.

It’s hard to pay full attention to the task at hand if you’re hungry, so Snickers wanted to tackle this in one quirky (and yet fulfilling) campaign, and create a unique and fun way to get Snickers into the hands of the hungry. Knowing that they are heavy mobile users, and that 87% of mobile-usage is ‘in-app’ activity, we designed three apps that were free Snickers vouchers in disguise that could deliver our brand message right into the hands of the hungry, promoted in unique and authentic channels fitting with the Snickers’ brand.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Given the limitations of a small budget and to make the apps feel genuine, our strategy was to broadly reach our core mobile-connected audience quickly while still being as targeted with the comms as possible. So we tapped into the perceived utility of each app, owning all related contextually relevant channels, and brought on-board well-known local key influencers who were in on the joke (including the NZ Prime Minister’s son, Max Key) to make the apps feel organic and genuine. Our approach was to match each app’s theme to the audience most receptive to the message in a highly environmentally contextual way. And given that the apps were effectively jokes, we only gave ourselves one week to do it in.