2017 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Why watch a pre-roll when you can play one? These pre-rolls spots sought to engage audiences by turning the pre-roll into a game viewers could “play” using the only input available: The Pause button. At certain intervals throughout the two spots, a Snickers bar crosses the bottom of the screen. The viewer is challenged to “catch” the Snickers by way of a perfectly timed press of the pause button. With a little luck and timing, the title characters could be transformed back into their original selves.

Creative Execution

Our films were designed to be played as pre-roll ads on YouTube, and automatically played before our target audience’s selected videos. People were also directed to the videos from the Snickers’ social media pages.

Results

Reach: Over 2 million total views in first week of launch. An unprecedented 92% audience retention rate, 78% higher than the industry standard. That means that the vast majority of viewers chose to watch the spots to the very end. Source: YouTube, Facebook analytics, February 2017

YouTube pre-roll ads have very low audience retention, with viewers invariably skipping the ads as soon as they can. These spots were Youtube pre-roll ads with built-in gamification designed to get the viewer to watch the whole commercial. As a result, they had an unprecedented view through rate - more so than any other pre-roll spot in Snickers’ history.

Snickers target market covers millennials who have grown up in an era of videogames. As such, they instinctively understand gamification and seize upon any opportunity to play. Using design and sound elements from classic 8-bit gaming, our videos primed our audience into game mode from the get go and convinced them to stick with the video to the end.