Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation ?

Communicating a brand tagline only by TVC is not enough for today’s teenagers. We collaborated with one of the Japanese most popular entertainment contents, a anime game “Idol Master” and baked our brand tagline in the content and let teens experience the tagline in a relevant way

Background

“You are not you when you are hungry” by SNICKERS has been a globally famous, successful TV campaign. But today, it is threatened to be forgotten. Because of the diminishing role of TV in their lives, teens are becoming increasingly unfamiliar with this message. We need to approach teens by completely customizing a campaign.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

SNICKERS collaborated with “Idol Master”, a number one Japanese anime game franchise wildly popular amongst teens. The players’ mission is to coach these idols to stardom as their producer. These cherished idols from the game suddenly transform into one with a horrifying face illustrated by a famous horror comic cartoonist. We revealed that this was a side-effect from hunger, and the audience has the power to bring them back to their cute selves by offering them Snickers on Twitter.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We found out from the data that young people had much more contact time with smartphone than with TV and their major interests are anime and video games. We focused on communicating in this area and experience the brand tagline “You are not you when you are hungry” in a most relevant way for teenagers.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Teens tweet with Snickers photo for satisfying their favorite idols’ hunger. The idols replies to their tweets for asking more Snickers. After having certain amount of tweets the idols’ hunger satisfy and they can get back to their cute selves. With hunger satisfies, the idols are able to perform on stage once again. These fans, to their surprise, found their idols wearing the Snickers T-shirt even in the game and play the game with the idols in it.

List the results (30% of vote)

・+20,000 posts with Snickers photo were submitted. ・The campaign became the no.1 trending topic on social media. ・”SNICKERS” mentions on social media rose by 4,800%. ・+7% sales uplift in a major convenient store chain.

Please tell us how you designed/adapted your campaign for the single country / region / market where it aired.

The contact points for Japanese teens have been changing dramatically. They don't watch TV anymore and communicating our long-lasting brand tagline "You're not you when you are hungry" only by TVC has become ineffective. But anime and gaming are highly popular amongst teens. So we collaborated with one of the most popular entertainment content in Japan, an anime game “Idol Master” and baked our brand tagline in the content and let the Japanese teens experience the tagline in a relevant way.