Snickers\' Thirty-Second Television Commercial During

Snickers' Thirty-Second Television Commercial During the Super Bowl

Rosanne Bar and Richard Lewis teamed up during Super Bowl XLV. They participated in a thirty-second spot for Snickers, the candy bar, in front of the largest TV audience in history, according to the Nielsen Company -- an estimated 111 million people.

The ad starts out in a lumberyard; it is foggy, appear to be the Great Northwest. There are large tree trunks stacked up and ready to be run into the sawmill. Standing there wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt with a black sport jacket over the t-shirt is Lewis. He is holding a big chain saw and appears to be ready to carve into one of the huge tree trunks / logs when he stops.

"You know I'm just not feeling the wood cutting thing today," he whines, in his classic comedy act pouting / whiny voice. "What is the rush here?" Lewis asks. "Is there like a world wide shortage of gazebos?" He throws his hands up in the air; his foreman walks away disgusted.

Meantime a guy (obviously dressed for work in a lumber yard) with a bright yellow hard hat walks over to Lewis, and says, "Tony, eat a Snickers." He hands Lewis a Snickers bar. "Why?" Lewis asks, immediately opening the candy bar. "Because you get whiney when you're hungry," the hardhat guy tells him.

Lewis takes an aggressive bite out of the Snickers bar. The camera goes to the man who gave him the Snickers bar. "Better?" he asks, softly, almost out of character with the rough outdoor work scene. The camera switches quickly back to Lewis. But Lewis is now a big rough lumberyard worker with a heavy beard and a hard hat. "Better," says the Snickers-eating man.

Suddenly the camera switches to Roseanne Barr, standing 20 feet away from the two men. Wearing a dressy jacket and holding a smaller chainsaw, she yells, "Hey, my back hurts." A millisecond later, a huge tree log swings from stage right and hits Barr very hard, knocking her flat on the ground. Undaunted and apparently unhurt, but dirty, Barr, from a position lying on her back, says, "Now my front hurts!" The ad closes with all brown frame and the words, "You're not you when you're hungry." And then the candy bar is shown quickly, breaking in half and a voice says, "Snickers satisfies."

The ad communicates the product, but as to the benefits -- what are the benefits of eating a candy bar? Nutrition? Not really. it's a clever ploy to get people to eat one between meals. Does it differentiate the product from the competition? Snickers is the only candy bar that uses comedy and some violence to appeal to consumers -- young consumers, to be sure. It is targeting a young market because older people know a vicious blow to Roseanne Barr like that (with the full force of tons of wood) would kill her. It could be redesigned to not be so brutally violent at the end, but the ad company placed this in the Super Bowl so they must believe the appeal will be pretty much across the board. But personally I'm negative towards using violence (even make believe) to sell a candy bar. It is attention getting and that is what the sponsor is aiming for.