Snickers & BBDO Share Sweet Super Bowl Secrets

Last night Snickers did the Big Reveal and unveiled its Super Bowl spot from BBDO New York.

Featuring Adam Driver, dressed in cowboy attire, the spot reminded viewers how disruptive a hungry belly can be. What mad the spot even more impressive was its real-time elements. To prove that it was happening in the moment, Driver revealed the score to one of his cast members - "21 to 3, Atlanta," before bringing down the set down...

shots caught up with BBDO's ECDs Peter Kain and Gianfranco Arena and Snickers' brand director Allison Miazga-Bedrick to find out how they logistically planned Super Bowl 2017 and why a live spot was the way forward.

BBDO ECD, Peter Kain

When and what was the brief with which Snickers approached you?

Over the years, we’ve had success on the Super Bowl with “You’re not you when you’re hungry” campaign. But we know how high the bar is every year -the Super Bowl audience expects to be surprised and awed. We needed to find a way to live up to those expectations without straying from the core insight of the campaign.

This year the client came to us with an awesome but ambitious goal: to be the most talked about brand in the Super Bowl - even if that means trying something a little riskier than what we’ve done in the past.

BBDO's ECD, Gianfranco Arena

Snickers has a long-standing relationship advertising at the Super Bowl. How did you approach this year’s project and was there a certain amount of pressure to live up to last year’s offering?

As the price of a Super Bowl spot has gone up, we realize there’s more pressure to make sure our clients get their money’s worth. One way to do that is to have an idea that is bigger than the spot itself - something that gets people talking in the days before, during, and after the game. Knowing we needed to achieve that made our brief more focused. And the resulting idea of doing a live commercial seemed like it could live up to that brief... if we could pull it off.

Snickers brand director, Allison Miazga-Bedrick

Why did you decide that live-streaming the campaign would be most appropriate for this year?

While its always been true that live broadcasts can bring an extra level of drama and excitement compared to filmed content, the ability for anyone to livestream with their phone has made “live” a genre all its own. Knowing something’s live just makes you want to watch. We know that Super Bowl viewers, even those who claim to watch for the ads, eventually start to tune them out. Hopefully knowing ours is being performed live will grab their attention again.

The live ad is only part of the equation though, as we’re also going to support the live ad with over 30 hours of original content featuring over 50 vignettes that we’ll stream live on SNICKERSLIVE.com and the SNICKERS® Facebook page leading up to the Super Bowl. We believe we’ll both delight our fans and reach new consumers by partnering with a wide range of influencers and celebrities on a new platform in a unique way.

What made you bring Adam Driver on-board this campaign; were you looking for a particular characteristic that he embodies?

Adam is a great actor who has already made his mark in a pretty wide range of roles. We like his range. That hopefully builds a little more suspense about what his role will be in the spot.

What were the biggest challenges in realising the campaign?

There are all kinds of challenges with the production and technical aspects of this campaign, but we’ve worked closely with FOX to realize our goal.