Flashback: Fifteen Years of Snickers’ Modern Classic

It’s flashback week on Ad Of The Week as we go back fifteen years in time to the launch of one of the great modern global campaigns – Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”. The candy bar ads, made with agency BBDO, have starred dozens of celebrities, spawned variations across media and platforms, and the slogan and concept has entered popular culture. Within a year of the campaign starting, sales were up 15% and Snickers’ market share had increased in over 50 different markets.

That was back in 2010, though, and the world has changed a lot since then. But does that matter? If you believe in the common theory of advertising wear-out, then the age of an ad is a big mark against it. Believers in wear-out hold that ads get less effective over time, whether because of cultural change or simply as an inevitable effect of people seeing them too many times.

We’ve tried to look for evidence of wear-out in our Test Your Ad database several times, and so far we haven’t found any. Ads rarely shift in effectiveness as they age, and if they do they’re as likely to wear in (become more effective over time) as wear out. As our recent Compound Creativity report showed, returns from long-term campaigns dip slightly in the second year but then start to rise and outstrip their initial returns the longer they go on. Brands deciding to axe successful campaigns simply because it’s time for something new are making a serious error.

The first ever “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” ad, with Betty White taking part in a hilarious college football match, is still a classic. Our retest of it this week scored an extremely strong 4.9-Star Rating, with a strong short-term Spike Rating too. What’s interesting is that the comments from viewers around the ad often referenced its age but in positive terms – “iconic” and “a classic”. People like seeing old ads again.

“You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” was always built to last. It’s the supreme modern example of what we call a scenario Fluent Device. Scenario Fluent Devices differ from the more common character-based kind – here it’s not the individual characters who become familiar brand assets, but the basic structure and story itself. A scenario Fluent Device is like a meme template, flexible enough to fit new content and tell hundreds of different stories, and they are one of the most effective tools for long-term campaigns.

Why are we putting Betty White and her unlikely football stardom back under the spotlight this week? Because, as is becoming clearer by the week, we’re living in uncertain times, with recession potentially looming. And when recession arrives, we know from bitter experience that it’s marketing budgets which feel the squeeze. With the fear of wear-out dispelled, it’s clear that careful reuse of old assets is a viable and effective way to manage tighter budgets.

So what better time to remind marketers that they should have a solid idea of which of their older campaigns, devices and assets still have the juice in 2025. It’s probably more of them than you think. With Test Your Ad, you can test creative from your archives to ensure it still resonates with consumers today. Access the Snickers Test Your Ad report below and learn more about Test Your Ad here.