2014 | Finalist | Best Use of Newspapers / Magazines
Advertiser: MARS Brand: Snickers Creative Agency: BBDO, The Sun Credits: Starcom — Stephanie Foong (Planning Director), Dominic Gan (Senior Media Planner)
The Challenge
In 2012, SNICKERS launched the new “You’re not you when you’re hungry” proposition with character, the infamous weakling – LínDàiyu as a goalkeeper. Her presence on non-TV media has yet to be maximized. How could this weakling push SNICKERS to be the top 5 chocolate brands by end 2013?
The Solution – Insight & Idea
Malaysians love their football. But they don’t know LínDàiYu, a character from a classical Chinese fiction novel. This character who was very ladylike, plays a weak goalkeeper. Her sentimental and perpetual weak qualities reminds us of our behaviour whenever we are hungry. When we are weak, we complain, and are out of character. We needed to make LínDàiyu popular across media channels. We had to infiltrate sports segments across mainstream channels. Therefore we became LínDàiyu’s sports agent. Our role was to promote her and negotiate her appearance in the different media scenes. One of an important scene for her appearance was newspaper. The idea: Make LínDàiyu the next sports spokesperson for The Sun’s sports section.
The Execution
We partnered with The Sun for LínDàiyu to become a football ‘news reporter’. She presented football match blunders with a “Quote of the Day”. Whenever there were football blunders, LínDàiyu will appear the next few days giving her ‘updates’ on these blunders. Our visual and media content worked hand-in-hand, making LínDàiyu part of the content. For example, LínDàiyu was strategically placed below a match blunder with news headline “Sloppy Goalkeeping could cost Old Lady”. This followed by SNICKERS’ proposition, “You’re not you when you’re hungry” conveniently placed below a grieving football player. In total we had a series of 7 newspaper content, each covering 2 pages each. Product and brand logo dominated approximately 60% of the page. Unconventional layout brought readers’ attention to SNICKERS. The call-for-action message drove audience to the online contest, “Hungry for SNICKERS”.
The Results
SNICKERS scored and secured the Top 5 chocolate brands position by end of 2013.(Source:ACNielsen,Chocolate Retail Audit’13) The Sun sports section reached over 300,000 readers and helped push the participation and engagement for the online contest. SNICKERS garnered 26,658 entries, increased its Facebook fans by 132% and engagement rate to 27% from a monthly 1.6% average. More importantly, audience recognized SNICKERS satisfies hunger. Brand awareness increased from 92% to 96%. (Source: Ipsos, Brand Health 2012/13)