Make it happen with snickers.
I think there is not a single person in the world who has not tried or at least not heard of such a chocolate bar as Snickers. I'm sure that the first thing that comes to people's minds when they see even the slightest mention of snickers is their famous slogan “You're not you when you're hungry!”. After all, it was this slogan that provided this chocolate bar with such huge popularity and literally saved it from bankruptcy in 2009. The design of the chocolate bar itself is not something, in my opinion, original, most likely something iconic, I would even say this design smacks of something nostalgic.
For my analysis, I chose a series of advertising posters that were developed by BBDO Moscow. The agency presented the development of the concept "You are not you when you are hungry" in outdoor advertising. A series of prints was created to be placed on billboards and city formats.
I want to start by saying that literally every Snickers advertising poster has the same concept, namely ridiculing a character who, in their opinion, is “hungry” due to the fact that he does not behave as usual, showing universal signs of hunger like: lethargy, tiredness, moodiness. All this is connected by the famous slogan “You are not you when you are hungry.”
The main focus of marketers was on men, which of course forced the brand to use rude jokes in advertising. The marketing team understood that it was impossible to completely abandon the previous image, but the new strategy required a different approach. Considering the fact that we live in a world where there is a universal code of conduct that men follow in order to stay "in the men's club".
These "rules" are known not only among men, anyone can identify them, especially an example of these rules is shown in the movie "Hangover". Of course, these rules are very toxic not only for male gender socialization, but also for female gender socialization. In this case, Snickers bars, which position themselves as a universal way to satisfy hunger, will help to return "to the alpha club". In this form, the idea can be adapted for distribution around the world. Based on this, we see that the hungry character in the Snickers bars advertisement is often interpreted as a woman or as a man who is not part of the group of strong “alpha” men.
I would also like to cite as an example another advertisement for Snickers chocolate bars featuring the famous black American actor and wrestler Mr. T in his most famous image of Sergeant B.A. Barakus from the TV series "The A-Team" was removed from the air after it was considered offensive to gays.
In this video, Mr. T throws a candy bar at a man in yellow shorts who is engaged in sports walking, shouting: "You are a disgrace to the male race. It's time to start running like a normal man!"
Mars Corporation, which owns the Snickers brand, issued a statement saying that the video was intended to be funny, but "humor is an extremely subjective matter."
In this example of advertising, we can observe a woman wearing a bra and underwear, next to her we can also see the hands of another person, which probably belong to a man. The woman on the poster is standing in a seductive sexy pose with her eyes closed and holding her hair, as if she is inviting a man to take off her bra. The man in the picture seems to have a hard time taking off her bra because he's wearing boxing gloves. Above the boxing gloves is the signature “You're not you when you're hungry” which is designed to draw several conclusions that he can't take off her bra and continue the alleged sexual activity that they seem to be starting to engage in.
The advertisement does not show or detail any idea about the product, how it looks, what it contains, or even that it is a food product. There are several problems with this ad, mainly due to the fact that the ad uses sex to sell a bar of chocolate.
While the debate against sexism is important, and it's positive that people have started to pay attention to it, the root problem is that Mars Corporation thought they had done nothing wrong with their advertising campaign. Mars Corporation's comments regarding the negative reaction to advertising are an outward manifestation of how the general public's thinking has become more receptive to sexual references, scenes of violence and discrimination used in advertising.
Citations:
(B. WAXMAN, 2022) B. WAXMAN, O., 2022. This Snickers Ad Manages to Be Sexist to Both Men and Women. [online] Time. Available at: <https://time.com/40255/snickers-ad-manages-to-be-sexist-to-both-men-and-women/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Regnum.ru. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://regnum.ru/news/3339349.html> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
Королёва, О., 2022. [online] Available at: <https://vc.ru/marketing/19611-snickers-ad> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
