For years Snickers has been telling the world that you’re not yourself when you’re hungry. When hunger strikes we tend to act a little out of character and this can manifest itself as crankiness, sleepiness, irritability or even as doubting your favourite basketball team. Our idea was to call out the ‘Haters’ who were doubting the number one seeded Raptors and make them eat their words. After all, the reason they were acting out of character was because they were hungry.

In the days preceding the start of the playoffs we began combing through Twitter to identify Raptor fans who were questioning their team’s ability to continue their winning ways into the post-season – and not surprisingly, we found tons of posts. We responded by turning their tweets into customized Snickers ‘Hater’ bars. A picture of the bars would be posted on Twitter in response to their tweet, accompanied by a message telling them ‘you’re a hater when you’re hungry’. We then sent out real Snickers bars with their tweets printed out on the packaging so they could literally eat their words. We continued searching out and responding to haters up to and into the first round of playoffs. Whenever there was hate towards the Raptors, Snickers was there to call them out for being hungry and make them eat their words.

Our goal was to call out Raptors fans who were acting out of character and that’s exactly what we did. In one week, our campaign generated over 2.25 million impressions. Sports commentators from everywhere from Sportsnet to the New Yorker reacted to our Hater Bars. Even Canadian hip-hop icon Kardinal Offishall got in on the action. Our campaign not only rallied support for the Raptors at the most crucial time in their season, it also reminded Canadians that when you’re being a hater, all you need is a Snickers.