Current Issues in Marketing Strategy

The new Snickers Ad featuring Mr T shooting chocolate bars at a power-walker and calling him "a disgrace to the male race" has been banned. The Ad features the tag line "Get Some Nuts", a continuation from the previous ad where drives a tank onto a soccer field and confronts a player faining injury. So was the TV commercial deliberately confronting? Is it a segmentation strategy & what are the ramification?



Advertising Strategy
Firstly, lets look at the TVC. The actual campaign is quite well conceived, "Get Some Nuts" is both a clever pun and plays up the physical attributes of the product. An attempt (be it vain) to create imagery in the consumers head and differentiate the product from competitors like Mars.

Snickers has jumped on branding bandwagon and specifically targeted the male market. I say bandwagon because it seems like an unusually high number of FMCG product have been doing so this year. The 'Man Cans' ad for Solo just one of many examples. What does this allow them to do?

Segmentation of any kind narrows the focus of any advertising campaign, the marketing message is more clearly voiced to the target audience and theoretically the ROI in that consumer segment is higher at the end of the day. Simple explanation for a simple theory. Does it work in this case? I would have thought that Snickers is a very male product, they have their sales data & market research, so I'll back them in.

Was it deliberately controversial?
I hear a reporter on the radio talking about 'shock & awe tactics', how advertising agencies are trying harder and harder to take the mickey out of minorities as a way to form better relationship with mainstream Aussies. What a load of Bull dust!

They were not trying to be controversial, their are 1000 other things that are not 'manly' that would have brought a similar number of complaints; drinking soft drink at the pub, drinking light beer, wearing Lycra bike pants, the list goes on. Sure, a little bit of forethought probably could have rejigged it to be more acceptable, but they were not trying to rock the boat. The image fits the tag line...it is a good campaign.

Joshua Strawczynski's Opinion
Great Ad campaign, due to a good tagline, huge media attention & a celebrity that speaks to their target audience (even if in a piss-take sort of way). The Ad is not deliberately confronting or rude and to be honest, the people that complained are not in the target audience anyway. The only effect this will have on the bottom line is the cost of the ad being flushed down the toilet. Shame really.

Sam Berringer's Opinion
censorship has gone mad. It reminds me of a the Taco-Bell Ads that used a dog with a Mexican accent, Mexicans complained that the dog represented their culture and
damaged their image & credibility. The funny contrast to this is that not one American complained about the Budweiser Frogs. It took 3 frogs to say one word, making Americans look slow & uneducated (if we apply the same logic)...yet it was taken for what it was, a frog saying Budweiser....shock horror. All I can say is: Get over yourselves people...lighten up!