With Snickers penetration stagnant at 12.9% we had identified the greatest driver of growth would come from high school students and teenager families. A group that accounted for only 25% of total penetration. Amongst this group we had been building the exam occasion for years around a studious, pressure to achieve and family pride motivation.

Now, with a new generation of exam takers who were not as blindly studious as previous generations and with covid impacting on ability to communally study, motivations, opportunity to buy and rapidly changing consumer behaviours we had to re-evaluate the exam preparation journey and excite new buyers to try, driving penetration and business success.

Exam preparation is tough. Covid restrictions had also made it lonely. Gaoko success not guaranteed, even more so with the distractions of your constantly blinking phone. We identified students were caught between complex exam prep and their favourite social platforms, influencers, content and passion points. There is a generationally famous quote “if the exam is about King of Glory (a popular online game), I will get full marks in the exam.

We identified this tension as an opportunity to exploit and make Snickers relevant to a new generation of exam takers and launched “Snickers Study Buddies”.

Snickers Study Buddies

We broke the loneliness of self study and made exam prep fun again! Instead of choosing study or pleasure we combined the two. Bringing knowledge, knowhow, the hardcore questions and entertainment to the forefront.

Partnering with number one youth platform Billibili, Snickers created China’s first “24 hr exam preparation challenge” offering a completely different exam preparation experience. Coupled with this was a deep partnership with Youdao study app reaching 74 million high school students, 9 million of which were joining the fight of the Gaokao exam season!

Leveraging Online TV, Social feed Ads and open ads to maximize reach, we drew attention to the Snickers 24 hour exam preparation challenge room, live streamed on Billibilli.

Inviting top KOLs (key opinion leaders) across subject matter areas from Math to Science, literature to music, we created your “study buddy” experience. Livestreaming as a relay, multiple study buddies, shared their experience of this life changing moment, gave answers to top exam questions or just keep exam preppers entertained.

We further amplified the brand message across the exam prep journey, partnering with Youdao study app enhancing and uplifting the lonely journey.

We had 1.29 million fans with us, representing 11% of gaokao students, more then 30,000 “bullet comments” on screen

Total+25.7% Offtake Growth;

+0.5%Value Share Growth Apr 2021

and a whole new generation of snickers lovers!