Snickers Rolls Out New “Hunger Bars” Packaging With Hunger Emergency Hotline Video

Snickers has unveiled the latest iteration of its “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry,” campaign, and this time it’s centered around what people are, rather than themselves, when they get peckish.

Goofball, Drama Mama, Princess, Curmudgeon, Cranky, Irritable and Confused are among 21 different labels that will soon begin appearing on the candy bar packaging, like the Coke cans and bottles that now bear people’s names or similar monikers.

The packaging will also encourage people to share photos of their bars socially using the hashtag #EatASnickers and will point them to a previously-unveiled meme generator — SnickersMeme.com — where consumers can create images related to their particular type of hunger symptom and share them with friends socially on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.

Along with its agency of record, BBDO New York, the Mars brand created a humorous YouTube video in which a call center employee responds to hunger emergency calls that have come in at 1-844-HUNGER-BAR. Here’s the video and audio of what you hear when you call into that number:

As soon as the phone is picked up, a recording says, “Welcome to 1-844-HUNGER-BAR,” and you can hear the rest of the audio below.

The brand says it will be rolling out additional campaign elements as the month goes on, including print advertising and a promotion using augmented reality mobile app Blippar, which lets people take smartphone pictures of objects in the real world and supplements them with related digital content. Snickers says consumers will be able to use the platform to create customized Hunger Bars and other brand-related content and share them with friends.

“We’re always looking for new ways to engage our fans, who know and love our campaign,” said Allison Miazga-Bedrick, director of the Snickers brand. “We believe the new bars will inspire people to not only quickly identify their own symptoms and satisfy their hunger, but give them a new, fun way to call-out friends and family on who they become when they’re hungry, too.”

Though a Snickers representative didn’t respond when we asked about paid media purchased to promote the effort, the brand is leveraging its social channels to let its existing fans know about the new packaging. It changed its Facebook and Twitter cover photo to align with the campaign and has encouraged people to name their hunger symptoms as comments to its posts.

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Pamela Parker

Pamela Parker is Senior Editor and Projects Manager at Third Door Media's Content Studio, where she produces Martech Intelligence Reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Digital Marketing Depot. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she served as Content Manager and Executive Features Editor. Parker is a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its beginning. She's a former managing editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University.