Snickers Insults Hungry People, Portraying Them As Killer Predators.
(click ads for closer look)
You may have read/heard about this week's industry kerfuffle in a vacuum caused by advertising's preeminent (to many) critic Bob Garfield in a column singling out recent "homophobic" TV spots, including two for Snickers (Why no mention of Dale Earnhardt's Big Mo' bar, Bob?). Well here, in this set of print ads for super-sized Snickers via Poland, Mars, Inc seems to be saying that extra hungry people are, in essence, no different than ugly, ravenous beasts. So incredibly insensitive. previous Snickers ads: this Halloween ad is one of the best candy ads ever. previous insulting candy bar ads: Swedish Fish ad insults cat lovers; M&Ms ad insults businesspeople; Butterfinger ad insults studious college kids.
posted by copyranter @ 3:30 PM
10 Comments:
as a current hungry person, i can testify to the fact that i 1) do not resemble somethings out of the Island of Dr. Moreau and 2) am far more interested in real food at present than an unfilling snickers bar.
Being a bit on the starch-dependent side, when my blood sugar crashes, I can relate to that beastly portrayal. A well-timed snack lets everyone keep their fingers and other small appendages. I don't see it as insulting. Foisting a great huge wad of sugar on a grossly overweight nation... now that's adding insult to injury.
Frankly, I'm stunned that anyone can even remember three Omnicom ads.
As for homosexual bias, Omnicom has been creatively sucking hard for over a decade.
Fill in your own punch line HERE.
For a company that's NOT opposed to testing on animals, it's funny how Mars Inc is running ads with animals in them now. As a former creative from the agency that currently has the Snickers account, I can remember many many ads getting killed by the client only because an image of an animal was used. I guess they're not afraid of bad press anymore.
Regarding 'one of the best ads" by Snickers, the Halloween ones. They were created for an award show only and probably ran in some Oklahoma weekly, once, just to qualify. They do look cool though. I was working at the agency when they were created. If it wasn't for the bad stock art that the ones I worked on were created with, you'd have seen a couple more.
For the Beast of a Hunger?
Just because "Impossible is Nothing" worked, doesn't mean that all phrases are reversible.
adhack
adhack: I think these are translated versions of the ads from Polish.
I like them, except they should have made some with women's faces.
I'm a scary beast when hungry.
People know to feed me or leave quickly.
FYI anonymous guy, Snickers Halloween ran in People Magazine. Which I hear is available at Oklahoma newsstands - next to all their weeklies with the fake ads in them.
What actually insults me are assumptions made by Bob Garfield that Americans are too stupid to rationalize an ad. It seems pretty obvious that he is scraping the bottom, really reaching far for that special something to pick on. I had a professor who would do the same thing, turning his lecture into an amateur's rant with occasional media law. Both of them are just windbags, filled with the type of wind that's brown and sticky.
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