Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

This is the new Snickers campaign, featuring New York Knicks legend Patrick Ewing:

There’s another one with rapper Master P. I guess this is a continuation of sorts to the Mr T campaign from a while back.

I’ve been thinking why Snickers would choose sort of has-been celebrities to endorse their brand. My guess is that they did some research and found that their brand had an outdated taint to it. I, for example, recall Snickers ads painting it as an performance enhancer of sorts for athletes, which I guess just wasn’t working anymore. The brand was taking itself a bit too seriously.

In the Mr T. ads, you still had a bit of that performance enhancing angle and masculinity left, albeit tongue in cheek. In these new ads, they’ve gone more further out with the irony and self-mocking humor. Both have a celebrity conversing in an unexpected situation with a geeky looking “normal” person.

The first spot features an overweight and out of shape Patrick Ewing dunking (unprovoked) on some fellow name “Ryan” in an exaggerated fashion, with mock posturing after the fact. It is also suggested that the geeky guy knows Ewing as they refer to each other as “Patrick” and “Ryan”. After the dunk sheepishly says “sorry” in the tone you’d say sorry to a friend you’ve just pulled a prank on.

The other ad has Master P asking for the geeky guy’s (called Josh) opinion on an extremely large, diamond-studded “P” necklace that he is intent on buying. I love the geeky guys reaction: a nonchalant but still emotional “I like it!”, as if he was expecting his opinion to be of great value to somebody like Master P.

This slightly out of place chumminess between these somewhat washed up stars and the geeky normal guys plays great and is oddly fascinating. The clumsy wordplay at the end of each spot adds to the self-depreciating humor as well (“Patrick Chewing” and “Master P-Nuts”).

By using guys like Patrick Ewing and Master P and treating the brand in this self-mocking way, Snickers is showing that it’s aware of its current cultural standing, and it is willing to laugh about it. This treatment sort of mixes Snapple’s famous use of “weird” celebrity endorsers (Richie Sambora, Howard Stern, Ivan Lendl) from back in the day with Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign, where Microsoft showed that they know Apple has been talking smack about them in their ads, and here’s what they think of it.

Looking at these example’s it seems to me that confronting your brand’s current meaning(s) head on, and then spinning it to a new direction or making light of it, seems to be the best way to manage it. Some brands fail to show literacy as to what their brand is currently about, and try to introduce a new image/myth/meaning sort of by force. This might have worked in the old days of mass media, but as consumers are more connected now and brand meanings flow freely and fast and are affirmed by consumers more firmly, people can sort of say “that’s not right, right?” when a new, conflicting myth/meaning is introduced.

Put it this way, it’s hard to enter the conversation (I hate that saying on brand interaction, but it fits here) with the intention of steering it without first understanding and acknowledging what the discussion is about. I think Snickers has done a good job with its entry to the conversation regarding itself (especially the Ewing ad played wonderfully with the chocolate-bar-as-performance-enhancer cliches, with exploding backboard and everything). Now we’ll have to see if Snickers’ self-depreciating humor allows them to steer the conversation as well.