Feast. From Snickers.

Snickers had a little trouble with their Super Bowl commercial this year, which featured two guys getting it on. In reaction to the negative feedback, the brand’s latest commercials (created by TBWA/Chiat Day) feature all sorts of very masculine and very straight behavior: throwing trash cans, driving erratically, hard rock and a road trip theme. The characters involved in this new campaign titled Feast include a pilgrim, a Viking, a Polynesian, a Roman and a King. You can follow the groups adventures across the country on the Snickers website.

After watching the spot above (scroll past the opening Boise ads), we were prepared to disregard the spot as “trying to hard”, but then we went to the micro-site and changed our negative view point to one of passability. In gaming, there are two are basic camps squabbling over what makes titles like Halo or Gears Of War so wildly popular – the narrative (”Narratologists”) or the interface of the game and the ability of the gamer within game play (”Ludologists”). We’d argue that you need both to create popular, profit generating games. With the recent surge of broadcast being paired with interactive, we feel like agencies need to take a cue from the gaming industry. In the case of the Snickers campaign, TBWA has managed to creat a firm narrative – 5 random, historical males on a road trip. They interact with each other, joke, laugh and viewers can get to know their personalities a bit. We would have liked to see more additional material through, which visitors can connect and interact with the characters. As a viewer, you are trapped in the audience role. If Snickers had made it so that say, you could ask the characters questions; compete to have them visit your town; create a road trip mix for them; pick their route, etc. the whole campaign might be a bit more compelling.

As it stands, we’re going to say it’s cute, but not much more. You know… we did love TBWA’s Skittles spots. No additional support came with these via the web, which made sense. They had just the right amount of realism paired with just the right amount of fantasy to really capture your heart.

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