Stop The Hunger Games
Mars
Issue 42 | March 2017
Agency
Impact BBDO Dubai
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Fadi Yaish Creative Directors Jamie Kennaway Stephanus De Lange Associate Creative Director Dio Santos
Production Team
Editor Lead Joris Bosdriez Motion Graohic Lead Jamies Elgie Senior Broadcast Producer Anju Purushot Broadcast Producer Rajaa Chami Production House Good People
Other Credits
Regional Account Director Frances McCabe Senior Account Manager Lina Ghulam
Date
January 2017
Background
Snickers® popular 'You're Not You When You're Hungry' platform had served as the bedrock to the brand's communication strategy for almost a decade.
The challenge was to keep the idea fresh by taking it into new territories in new ways.
Idea
YouTube pre-rolls are not well-liked and people skip as quickly as possible unless they are engaged.
The idea was to make pre-rolls fun rather than irritating. Two specially designed films were created, 'Wrestler' and 'Rockstar', which could be played as games. Simply using the pause button in the YouTube video players could help the hungry hero (a crazed driver of a school bus, a demented guitarist umpiring a tennis match) grab a Snickers® and revert to their normal, nice and non-hungry selves.
The limitations of the pre-roll format were such that only the pause button allowed for any viewer input.
Making the ad clear it was a game was important to set it apart from regular pre-rolls and get the viewer past the first five second 'Skip' mark. From there it needed to be engaging enough to keep them until the very end.
Results
After just two weeks, the average viewer retention is 90%.
Our Thoughts
In 2014, YouTube decided to close down on custom gadgets. Much loved by creatives in agencies, the numbers revealed that YouTube viewers didn’t like them. Such a pity. There were some great creative executions. Nintendo Warioland, for instance, back in 2009, (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=kZHnhhpYBhw) through to Honda Type R’s ‘The Other Side’ (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=A3wJsZr27nI) more recently. Full marks to Impact BBDO for finding something new to do in YouTube. I love this because it is a demonstration of real creativity. Obstructions and limitations simply create rules that are there to be broken. And just look at the results. 90% viewer retention.
New, different, fun – these are words which, between them, spell success.
One of the world’s top 10 agencies in The Big Won rankings 2016 (see pages 4-9) is off to a great start in 2017.