Corporate Apology
Mars Chocolate North America/Snickers
Issue 50 | February 2019
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide David Lubars Chief Creative Officer, BBDO New York Greg Hahn Executive Creative Directors Gianfranco Arena, Peter Kain Creative Directors Bianca Guimares, Peter Alsante
Production Team
Agency Director of Integrated Production David Rolfe Group Executive Producer Amy Wertheimer Production Agency BBDO Studios Directors Bianca Guimares, Peter Alsante
Other Credits
Global Account Director Susannah Keller Account Directors Lisa Piliguian, Tani Corbacho Account Executive Danee Fields Senior Project Manager Amy Orgel Business Manager Paul Cisco Group Planning Director Annemarie Norris Planning Director Christina Stoddard Planner Dexter Blumenthal Communications Planner Michael Schonfeld
Date
May 2018
Background
Within their well-known “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign, Snickers wanted to launch Espresso, Sweet & Salty and Fiery, three bold new flavours.
The cultural phenomenon of the “corporate apology video” gave the brand the opportunity to join those headlines by making a hungry mistake of their own.
Idea
Snickers deliberately made a hungry mistake of their own and then built a campaign around their corporate apology.
First, they ran an ad in multiple magazines (like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly) that called their customers jerks. Then, they apologised for their “outburst” with a second print ad that ran in subsequent issues of the same magazines.
Snickers partnered with popular gaming influencer Santorin and appeared to be rude to him before issuing a heartfelt apology.
Anyone who felt offended was invited to tag Snickers in a complaint so that the brand could apologise to them personally too.
The video put to ironic use all the best clichés from recent apology videos.
Results
Their “real” apology about the “fake” mistake led to the new flavours outperforming the rest of the chocolate category with consumers under 35. And it reminded people that it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re not you when you’re hungry.
Our Thoughts
The challenge for brands today, if they want to seem at all relevant to younger target audiences, is they have to be seen to be participants in contemporary culture, rather than camp followers. Snickers, by tapping into what has become a new genre of corporate hand-wringing, does exactly that.
The brand knows that viewers will know what they are up to and will appreciate the joke.
What we particularly like is how the idea worked in social media, Snickers inviting viewers to be publicly outraged so the idea would spread and then offering personal apologies to all individual complainants.