American football (a.k.a.Handolive) is getting bigger in Brazil. But, let’s face it–it'll never be as big as the real football, even though they have the same name.So SNICKERS decided to poke fun at the sport in classic SNICKERS style.But is it smart to make fun of the name of a sport on its biggest day? Well, with a major name and authority on the topic supporting us, we knew that we could get public opinion on our side and score some earned media.But evidently we underestimated the true global power of the celebrity that we chose for this single-country campaign.

Brazil is known for being the land of football. It has more World Cup titles than any other country, and Brazilian players can be found on the biggest teams across the world. It's the most popular sport in the country by far, with a massive, passionate following. Even so, American football is winning over Brazilians. Brazil is the second biggest audience for the Super Bowl outside the U.S.

SNICKERS has only recently started endorsing football (soccer) as one of its platforms. But the brand has a long, famous history with American football. Weighing both these elements, the brand wondered: "Is there space to develop a Super Bowl campaign in Brazil?"

The solution was to compare it with Brazil's official sport and show people that, though they share a name, they have nothing in common. What's more, American football doesn't even deserve to be called football. The only acceptable excuse for calling it football is if you're hungry.

To make the idea work, we couldn't be the only ones talking about it. We needed some big names to back us up, and we needed to get the whole internet talking. So the plan was to drop a social media bomb with a post by Ronaldo, who'd already been a brand ambassador. But an unbranded post with an unbranded hashtag, a few hours before the big game. Then we would come in with some social media support and reveal during the game that this was a branded activation by SNICKERS with 3 single-air TVCs, asking for consumer participation and using the same hashtag that Ronaldo had previously used in his post.

We started the campaign with an unbranded post by Ronaldo, the famous Brazilian striker, and after it gained momentum the plan was to support it with social media. That turned out to be unnecessary. Ronaldo's post was so buzzworthy and engaging that we changed our strategy on the fly, and ultimately only revealed that this was a branded activation with the 3 TVCs during the Super Bowl. One explaining our theory, another endorsing it with more facts and, in the end, asking people to help SNICKERS come up with a new name for the sport using the hashtag #futebolSQN (something like #footballNOT), the same hashtag that Ronaldo used in his unbranded social post. The immediate response from consumers and engagement with the campaign was overwhelming and almost instantaneous, quickly snowballing into a twitter trending topic.

The brand had an uplift of 570% in social media mentions, compared to the month before;

The campaign collected: +46MM impacts in just a few hours.

The NEGATIVE REPERCUSSION came to just 0.04% of the impact as a whole. The POSITIVE IMPACT was 2K greater than THE NEGATIVE.

The action REACHED +R$ 470K in advertising equivalence.

In the press scenario, the ROI exceeded R$ 458K.

IN BRAZIL, via earned media, the action impacted +20 MILLION PEOPLE in publications which MENTIONED THE BRAND (NO amount was invested in BUYING NATIONAL PRESS ADVERTISING).

33 Million impacts around the world, despite being a single-country campaign.

Mentions in more than 20 countries, on the same day as multi-million-dollar American Super Bowl campaigns were being launched.