Snickers already had a good line before 2010. For years its ads had ended with “Hungry? Grab a Snickers!” But the line described a product benefit. The campaign that replaced it described a feeling everyone recognizes.
The idea
BBDO New York built the new campaign around a simple human truth: people get irritable, slow and unlike themselves when they are hungry. Snickers, a filling chocolate bar with peanuts, was positioned as the fix.
The execution made the idea literal. In each ad, a hungry person is played by someone completely unexpected. When a friend hands them a Snickers and they take a bite, they transform back into their normal selves. The tagline: “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
Betty White on the field
The first ad aired during Super Bowl XLIV in February 2010. A group of young men is playing pickup football, frustrated with a sluggish, complaining teammate named Mike, who is played by 88-year-old actress Betty White. After a rough tackle, a friend hands her a Snickers. One bite, and Mike is a young man again. Actor Abe Vigoda made a cameo as another hungry player.
The contrast between White and a rough game of football was the joke, and it landed. Ipsos ASI’s testing ranked the ad the most entertaining, most unique, best liked and most talked-about Super Bowl ad of 2010. The researchers noted that Super Bowl spots are among the most expensive ads of the year, and that some build the brand while others merely pass as good entertainment. By their measures, the Snickers spot did both.
Taking it global
The format traveled easily. Any celebrity could stand in for a hungry person, which let Snickers make versions for markets around the world with local stars.
Results
According to BBDO, the campaign took Snickers from the seventh-best-selling candy bar to number one. In 2020, USA Today’s Ad Meter, the long-running consumer poll of Super Bowl ads, named it the best Super Bowl campaign of the previous 25 years.
Why it worked
- It owned a feeling, not a feature. Every chocolate bar tastes good; Snickers claimed the problem it solves.
- The format was a machine. Hungry person played by a surprising celebrity, then Snickers, then back to normal: endlessly repeatable and easy to adapt.
- Casting was the punchline. The more unexpected the stand-in, the funnier the ad.
- It had a clear role for the product. The candy bar isn’t decoration; it’s the moment the story turns.
The campaign turned a single Super Bowl joke into a long-running brand platform, and it’s regularly cited as one of the most effective uses of humor in modern advertising.