Snickers seeking global reach with new vlogger-led digital campaign
Snickers is the latest brand to tap into the rise of social influencers with a new global digital campaign that sees popular video bloggers, including F2Freestyles and Ultimate Handyman, create branded “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” ads.
The latest execution of the brand’s popular campaign has launched on YouTube and shows video bloggers who have influence in the campaign’s eight countries, including the UK, present their usual “how-to” videos while hungry and “off their game”.
The end frame sees the vloggers back to their old selves alongside the Snickers logo and tagline “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.”
“We are excited to be extending the reach of our phenomenally popular Snickers brand online tapping into the global popularity of ‘how to videos’,” said Dan Burdett, Snickers global brand director at Mars.
This is not the first time the brand has looked to celebrities to promote the brand on social. It escaped censure over controversial tweets sent by celebrities such as Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand promoting the brand in 2002, although complaints challenged that the campaign did not explicitly state it was promotional.
While the “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign has so far mainly looked to TV, with ads starring the likes of Mr Bean and Betty White shown returning to their normal selves after eating a Snickers, it appears the brand is taking another shot at pushing its presence with online celebrities.
“The ‘off their game’ vloggers are an innovative digital twist on our hugely successful “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” TV ads,” Burdett insists. “Between them the international vloggers in this campaign have over 7.5m subscribers, giving the brand campaign huge global reach.”
Snickers is the latest in a lineup of brands to look to vloggers in order to expand their reach and target new consumer groups.
Nationwide recently launched a YouTube channel titled “Money Stuff”, aimed at 14-16 year olds, asking popular bloggers to deliver lessons on how to deal with a bank account, while Domino’s used high profile Vine users in a campaign involving the search for the ultimate slice of pizza.
Brands are also lining up to work with the likes of vlogger Zoe Elizabeth Sugg, known on YouTube as Zoella, who has over seven million followers in the UK and two million elsewhere, outdoing the readership of the likes of Glamour and Grazia amongst the 18-34 female age group.
However, the relationship between brands and vloggers came under fire last year, when Mondelez was the first company to have YouTube ads banned due to an “unclear” vlogger tie-up for its Oreo brand, sparking debate among the industry and calls for more clear branding in paid videos.
And despite the recent trend for brands to tap vloggers to endorse their products over traditional celebrities, the wide global audiences that watch vloggers are not looking to them for purchase-related information but rather for entertainment value, according to a report earlier this year by the GlobalWebIndex (GWI).
The survey showed that vloggers are the least effective source of product discovery, with only 7% of all internet users saying they find out about new products, services or brands via vlogs, a number that only rises to 12% for those who have watched a vlog in the last month.