Reel Ad of the Week

SNICKERS feeds hungry AI in new campaign

By Reel Chicago
September 1, 2026

(Courtesy of BBDO)

For 16 years, SNICKERS has blamed strange human behavior on hunger. Now BBDO Chicago has decided artificial intelligence might have the same problem.

The brand’s latest campaign, “Hungr.AI,” takes the long-running “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” platform into the AI era, reframing hallucinations, bizarre answers and overly agreeable responses as something much more familiar.

Maybe AI is just hungry.

The idea builds on one of advertising’s most durable brand platforms by applying its central joke to a cultural conversation already happening around generative AI.

“Just like people, AI can sometimes act unlike itself and make humorous mistakes – confidently giving an incorrect answer, validating a bizarre idea, or being overly agreeable,” noted Ashley Gill, vice president of brands and content marketing at Mars.

For SNICKERS, those peculiar AI behaviors began to look suspiciously similar to the way people act when hunger takes over. “If hunger can make people act unlike themselves, we can have a little fun when AI starts doing the same,” Gill added.

The campaign also includes two films, “Marathon” and “Tattoo,” directed by Pete Marquis through Good Behavior. Both explore the consequences of seeking advice from hungry AI.

In “Marathon,” artificial intelligence encourages someone to consider attempting a marathon without training. Watch below:

Tattoo” finds another user entertaining some particularly questionable placement advice. It is absurd, but only slightly more absurd than some of the actual AI interactions circulating online every day.

Josh Gross, chief creative officer at BBDO Chicago, said the opportunity came from recognizing just how neatly AI’s occasional odd behavior fit into the brand’s existing premise.

“The great brand platforms stay true and relevant no matter how much the world changes around them,” Gross said. “Once we realized AI’s weirder habits are actually quite comparable to hungry human behavior, we couldn’t resist bringing ‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’ into the conversation.”

Then came the slightly more difficult creative question.

How exactly do you feed artificial intelligence a SNICKERS?

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Hungr.AI

The answer became Hungr.AI, a digital SNICKERS bar users can paste into an AI assistant when it begins dispensing questionable advice.

The experience incorporates a series of humorous prompts designed to “feed” the AI and steer its response back toward something more useful.

Mars is careful not to suggest that SNICKERS is actually fixing AI.

“There is functionality behind the experience, but we’re not claiming that SNICKERS is literally fixing or improving AI tools, and we are not a tech company,” Gill said.

The joke works precisely because it doesn’t need to.

AI hallucinations and overly agreeable assistants have become recognizable enough that the behavior already feels relatable. SNICKERS simply applies a brand idea audiences have understood for more than a decade.

That cultural familiarity is what makes the campaign work.

Rather than attaching SNICKERS to artificial intelligence simply because AI is the technology of the moment, BBDO Chicago found a behavior that genuinely fits the existing brand platform.

“The opportunity isn’t simply to put SNICKERS into a new technology conversation,” Gill said. “It’s to take a real, relatable conversation people are already having and give it a distinctly SNICKERS spin.”

That distinction matters.

Plenty of brands have spent the last several years asking how they can somehow incorporate AI into their advertising.

SNICKERS found a better question:

What if AI already behaves exactly like a SNICKERS commercial?

The answer demonstrates just how much flexibility still exists inside “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry,” which debuted during Super Bowl XLIV in 2010 with Betty White and became one of the most recognizable advertising platforms of the modern era.

The faces, situations, and technology can change completely while the basic insight remains intact.

Someone, or now something, starts behaving strangely.

There must be a reason.

Give them a SNICKERS.

“The technology is new, the behavior is new, but the ‘not you’ moment is something SNICKERS has been owning for years,” Gill said.

For Reel Chicago, that makes “Hungr.AI” our REEL Ad of the Week. Because while every agency is trying to figure out what AI means for advertising, BBDO Chicago found something considerably simpler.

Apparently, it just needed lunch.

CREDITS:

BRAND: Mars