Digital

Snickers UK campaign: clever use of Twitter

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Brands have used Twitter to promote news (media brands fit in well here), handle complaints & service issues, sell products or simply entertain by offering a witty take on current affairs. When speaking of brands using Twitter well, the oft mentioned cases are Dell, Best Buy and Zappos. In India, Hippo, HDFC Cards and Reliance Mobile have created buzz about their use of Twitter.

Perhaps the most ingenious use of Twitter was by Snickers during the launch of their global creative platform ‘You are not you when you’re hungry’ in UK. The TV ads, based on the insight that when people have small pangs of hunger, they are irritable and behave out of character’ were brilliant. The protagonists were shown tantrums like celebrity big shots or divas because of their hunger. During the UK launch, this creative idea was cleverly tweaked to suit Twitter as a medium: celebrities were asked to tweet ‘out of character’. So we had supermodel Katie Price tweeting about macro economics, cricketer Ian Botham tweeting about learning to play Cello and boxer Amir Khan tweeted about philately. Brilliant.

These out of character tweets were noticed and created a buzz. So much so that Katie Price’s tweets even got a mention in the UK Parliament. Later when it was revealed that these tweets were meant to promote a brand campaign, the UK advertising authorities got into the picture; the campaign was eventually cleared. Here’s the case study video:

Agency: AMV BBDO. Video via: Cannes Lions 2012

The campaign won a Silver at the Cannes Lions 2012 festival in the Cyber category. I thought it was a great example of a brand idea hardwired into a creative use of a medium’s intrinsic characteristics. What say?

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