SNICKERS
Analyzing the advertisement:
Simply this commercial represents how Snickers satisfies the hunger that consumes a person and changes his personality. The main idea is how hunger can make a person so dramatic, to show that they made the character of a grieving lady from a Mexican soap opera. Mexican soap operas are well-known to be extremely over dramatic (Mexican soap operas – Telenovelas mexicanas, 2013). The smart idea behind this ad was how they used the dramatic reaction in an anger situation. When the guys are watching a soccer match they tend to be very angry and emotionally invested in the game. They shout, they scream, and occasionally swear, but they do not cry and weep. The slogan ‘’ you’re not you when you’re hungry’’ is clearly shown in this ad. The main character switches back to normal after having a snickers bar. The objective of this commercial was to deliver fame for the product. Peter Field said in his book Marketing in the Era of Accountability ‘’Fame is not simply about generating brand awareness.
It is about building word-of-mouth advocacy for the brand – getting it talked about, creating authority for the brand and the sense that it is making most of the running in the category.’’ When potential customers walk into a grocery store or a hyper market there are many brands of chocolate that they can choose from. Almost everyone knows what Snickers is, so when they made the commercial they knew the goal was not about increasing brand awareness it was about providing brand fame. Being famous was the most important aspect for them since it meant that people who currently didn’t care about Snickers are going to talk more and more about it. Since that commercial made people start to make jokes using Snickers idea ’’ you’re not you when you’re hungry’’ and that exactly what they made the commercial for. The more people talk about it the more they buy it.
Target Group:
Every chocolate has target segments, and you can know the segments by the company’s marketing strategies. For Snickers, they have many targeting groups; they are considering the gender, age, social class and interests. Snickers had very masculine marketing strategies for young males only when they had “Have Some Nuts” as their slogan. The company had to change their marketing strategies when they noticed that young males started to buy Snickers less and less, so they started “You’re not you when you’re Hungry” Campaign (Jennifer Slegg, 2013). In this campaign they had a totally new targeting tactics to grab more customers.
First gender, they are targeting both males and females. Second age, their age limit is from 18 up to 35 (Linda, 2013). Third social class, since the snickers bar is for 3.50 SR, so they are targeting only middle and high classes. Low classes will choose a cheaper chocolate bar because they will not be able to afford it. Finally interests, in each advertisement they are using a different concept, to catch their fans attention. In this ad they used the Mexican actor to catch the attention of Mexican movies fans.
Motivation:
1- Biological vs. Learns Need:
Snickers used the Drive Theory which shows a person need for something unreachable at the moment and that will change a person’s mood “becoming Dramatic” for instance. In the commercial they present a man watching a game while he was hungry, so his drive was to eat, but he was excited to leave the game.
2- Motivational conflict:
In snickers commercial the motivational conflict is “Approach to Approach” because the ad shows that the man was choosing between a need and a want “the game and the food”. 3- Specific needs and buying behavior:
Need for power:
In the ad they used need for power because they wanted to show that being hungry is like being another person either Dramatic or weak. So, snickers will give you the power that you need to be yourself and satisfy your demand.
4- Need vs. Wants:
In the ad, they have illustrate a fanny story that shows the need (hunger) and the want (snickers) of a person to make the audience connect their need of food with choosing snickers for their want.
5- Type of needs:
The commercial is showing the biogenic need. The biogenic need is one of the basic needs of human being (food). In the ad they presented the human need of food changed the character of the person due to his need, and that’s why this ad is considered biogenic need.
6- Maslow’s Hierarchy:
Figure 1: Maslow’s Hierarchy
In this ad, snickers was a physiological need, when the guy got hungry, his friend offered him a snickers, so he considered it as food. It is also a need for belongingness, they guy ate the snickers to fit in with his friends.
7- Consumer Involvement:
Figure2: Involvement:
SWOT Analysis:
Figure 3: SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis
Strength
1. Popular brand name.
2. Great taste and good packaging.
3. Sponsor of global football and other sports teams.
4. Perceived as Health Bar.
5. No artificial colors.
6. Won the creative effectiveness award.
Weakness
1. Limitation in flavor.
2. Their commercials focus only on males.
Opportunity
1. New flavors and ingredients.
2. New ideas for their chocolate.
3. New commercials that targets females.
Threats
1. Other competing chocolate brands.
2. Calorie conscious people.
Strengths:
Snickers chocolate has a popular brand name, a great chocolate taste and good packaging. snickers is also a sponsor of global football and other sports teams, also the chocolate snickers is perceived as a Health Bar because it doesn’t contain any artificial colors, unlike the other chocolate brands. Their goal in the ad is to feed people’s hunger with a small chocolate bar of snickers chocolate that they can take as a snack. Furthermore, they have showed in the commercial that we have chosen that hunger can make people act different than who they truly are. Moreover, that commercial had a great success, it won the Creative Effectiveness award for representing their product snickers chocolate bar in a creative way which represents reality in a funny way that people will enjoy watching it every time, so their point is to stop the hunger’s drama with a snickers bar.
Weaknesses:
Snickers has a weakness in their flavor, they have a limitation in their flavors instead of expanding their chocolate bar by adding new flavors and ingredients. Their commercials are also limited, they are showing commercials that only represent males such as the football commercial that we’ve chose, and they didn’t make any commercials that represent females!
Opportunities:
snickers chocolate has many opportunities, they can make new flavors or add more and new ingredients such as caramel or chocolate chip for chocolate lovers, they can also make a white chocolate snickers bar or make chocolate bars that contains less peanut butter and caramel for people who go to gyms or go on a certain diet in order to be healthy and stay fit. They can even make snickers chocolate sauce for dipping and sandwiches to target more people. They can also change the idea of their commercials and make ideas that target the females specifically instead of only making commercials that targets males like the ad we’ve chosen. They have targeted males who love football and get mad while cheering or losing to the other team. They can make a similar idea to girls by using something they love doing such as shopping.
Threats:
Snickers chocolate can be threatened by other competing chocolate brands such as Galaxy, Nutella, Milky Way, kitkat, Oreo and M&M’s. There are many famous brands that can threat snickers, so that’s why they need to enhance their advertising in order to avoid being threatened. The calories that their chocolate bar contains can also be a threat to the company. Their calories Conscious people due to the amount of peanut butter and nuts and caramel that heir chocolate bar contains, so many people avoid eating their chocolate bars in order to stay healthy, fit and avoid gaining calories! The self:
Self exists in the advertisement. The first response of the woman shows that what she says is her own opinion. The same thing she saw in the match may be given different response by someone else, but she did it in her way. The emotions in her words are very clear. She is very emotional about the lack of performance by the player and the expectations she has from that player. The impression she gave were totally her own as another person would give another kind of impression even if he/she has the same feelings about the same match. The opinion of the boy who gave her the snickers also show himself as no other person would have the same believe of the snickers that he has and the change the snickers brought is not a big surprise for him as it would be for any other.
Figure 4 : The Self
Self-Concept
Self-Esteem
Fantasy
In the advertisement, it is the snickers which brought the self-concept in the attitude of the characters, but the way it was presented by one of the character shows his personal concept of the snickers. He believed strongly that the snickers is offering the desired change in the characters. If he was not sure on what he is going to offer will bring the desired change he would have not be that confident.
The advertisement shows an example of self-esteem. The person who offers the snickers and claim that it would bring in her desired changes has undoubtedly great self-esteem.
The advertisement has great fantasy appeal, just by eating snickers all of your emotional troubles come to an end. This is only possible by day-dreaming or fantasy, but the advertisement shows it happened by the great taste of snickers. A person’s mind is shifted from one state into another. This is really wonderful and only those who believe in fantasy can have an approach to it.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM:
As a woman changed into a man just by eating sinker has great symbolic meanings. The women are presented to be soft, more emotional and weaker comparing to men. If they have some emotional stress, they can’t bear it easily as men. It would be right to say symbolically that by snickers a character become stronger to face the tough time as he converts to a female.
Perception:
1- Adaption:
It is clear from the advertisement that the characters were talking about taking snickers all the times, and also the great changes that could affect us. This means that we used to take snickers all the time and becoming habitual to it. Sometimes we don’t care for some of the harmful effects that it can happen to us.
2- The Gestalt:
The advertisement implies principle of closure, principle of similarity and also principle of figure ground. First principle of closure, when we see the advertisement we try to complete what is left incomplete by our own thinking power that the whole advertisement was about snickers. Second principle of similarity, snickers have other products and we look only to the name of the snicker and take the product blindly. Finally, the advertisement best suites the figure ground principle as we focus only on snickers and not on the crying female or the losing football match.
VALUES:
The advertisement displays some of the most important values. As there are nine consumer-based values and some of them are visible in the advertisement. This includes sense of belonging, fun and enjoyment in life, warm relationship, and sense of accomplishment. The advertisement shows these values in very comprehensive way as it gives us sense of belonging when we see that we have some important in solving the problems. Fun and enjoyment is also clear in the advertisement. At the end, when all of the drama comes to an end, and all problems settled down, we feel sense of accomplishment.
Our competitor:
The inventor of m&m’s is the Forrest Mars Company. They have created M&M’s chocolate during the Spanish Civil War in March 1941. At the same year, they have started selling the chocolate in public. In 1954, they invented m&m’s peanut chocolate. M&m’s is the first competitor of Snickers because they are almost targeting people through the similar strategies. Moreover, “ according to Euromonitor, is expected to post $3.57 billion in global sales by end-2012, capturing a 1.8% share, while M&M’s is still not far behind with $3.49 billion in global sales and 1.8% share” (RAPPLER.COM, 2012). Competitor analysis between snickers and m&m’s:
Snickers: is the world’s best-selling candy bar. Crammed with peanuts, caramel and nougat then coated with milk chocolate (Mars.com-Snickers news). M&m’s: is chocolate candy that’s its paint with different color. Snickers and m&m’s are targeting different people:
Snickers is targeting people from age 18 to 35, while m&m’s is targeting people who are older than 12 years and specially teenagers. They are showing their product in a fun, playful format. Due to that, m&m’s is more childish than snickers.
The success key:
Snickers was invented in 1930 (Mars.com-Snickers news) and it was a big hit, after 80 years it is still the same as it was. They are doing a unique advertisement; they are making it exciting by including celebrities. On the other hand, m&m’s success was making their product fun, joyful and they don’t include celebrities a lot like snickers. The similar brand and why:
M&m’s is similar to snickers, one of m&m’s flavors is peanut and peanut butter which is very similar to the most important ingredient in snickers bars, and they’re both covered with chocolate.
Figure 5: Snickers Growth in 2007-2009 Between 2007 till 2009, Kit Kat was number one chocolate in the world with 12% growth, while Snickers was the last with 6.2% growth.
Figure 6: Snickers Growth in 2009-2011
Between 2009 till 2011, Snickers went from the lowest growth to the highest, and that was after starting “You are not you when you are hungry” campaign.
Figure 7: Snickers New Growth
From 2011 till now, Snicker still winning the highest growth in the world.
Familiar advertisement:
We have chosen L’usine advertisement because they have presented the same concept of the hungry man and how he changed because of the hunger. Also, they shows us that he returned to himself after eating L’usine and that was an advice from his friends just as snickers ad.
