When you fall victim to hunger you can do some pretty stupid things sometimes. So to dramatise just how an attack of hunger can affect us, we utilised the stupidity of members of the general public. We created rolls of Snickers ‘Hunger Attacks’ tape and used them to cordon off examples of idiotic behaviour on Russia’s city streets. By also encouraging and empowering the public to tape and share examples they’d spotted, we were able to build a Snickers movement that grew both online and offline throughout the nation.

You're not you when you're hungry.

The ‘Snickers effect’ was already famous from TV ads: when someone was hungry and behaved strangely, Snickers helped sort them out to return to their former selves. But how can you make such a specific TV construct travel to real life?The idea was inspired from the product itself: in the manufacturing process, Snickers wrappers come in meters-long plastic rolls; we took those rolls and, instead of printing the regular Snickers pack design, we wrote “Snickers / Hunger Attack” on a yellow background, a design similar to what police use when they mark a crime scene. We printed hundreds of meters of yellow plastic tape and gave them away to civic groups in Moscow, simply asking our young volunteer friends to start marking with “Hunger Attack” everything they thought was wrong on Moscow streets. The victims of hunger were now exposed and made public.

The campaign was highly effective for 2 reasons:1. low costs: the campaign was literally ‘made with Snickers’ – using the actual material Snickers wrappers were made of. The idea appealed to civic groups, volunteers were planting our message without any financial compensation.2. the buzz effect: the yellow rolls became so popular that those involved got requests for more tape from their friends and their friends’ friends. Snickers gave open-minded young Muscovites a voice, a chance to make a bold statement and punish acts of civic misbehaviour.