Snickers’s innovative AI-powered campaign featuring José Mourinho’s clone won Gold at The Drum Awards for Marketing. This pioneering initiative leveraged AI to create personalized videos for fans who shared their own ‘Own Goals,’ blending technology with football fandom to foster deeper brand engagement.
In June 2024, Snickers announced a new signing just in time for the summer of football: esteemed football manager, José Mourinho. In a first-of-its-kind partnership, the brand teamed up with José to pioneer a fully authorized AI clone, designed to tackle Own Goals for football fans across the globe.
His task? To coach football fans out of the Own Goal mistakes they made during the summer with the help of an authorized AI clone.
To create personalized videos of José for any fan who submitted an Own Goal, SNICKERS made pioneering use of AI. This first-of-its-kind initiative, developed in partnership with T&Pm and Helo, and powered by ElevenLabs, Synclabs, and OpenAI GPT 4.0, involved eight separate stages in the AI pipeline to create a unique ‘chain of thought’ architecture. The process included safeguarding measures to ensure consistently entertaining and brand-safe original content, helping each output feel unique without relying on templated material.
It had been a busy summer of football, and fans were expected to make more gaffes—or Own Goals—than ever before. Whether it was accidentally buying flights to Dortmund instead of Düsseldorf or taking a selfie with a much-ridiculed half-and-half scarf, everyone could think of examples of how these moments came to life.
The platform tapped into a cultural truth: social media-fueled fan banter surrounding football often attracted more buzz than the actual matches themselves.
SNICKERS partnered with Meta to integrate this bespoke AI-powered José with WhatsApp, creating a unique integration that allowed consumers to bring their personalized interactions with José into the communities and conversations they cared about most.
No other AI-powered campaign had used the technology in this exact way before: trained to deeply mimic the personality of a major talent, capable of generating limitless pieces of original video content, and designed to be widely shared.
Gülen Bengi, Chief Growth Officer Mars Snacking & Lead CMO Mars Inc., said: “At Mars, we believed in building Brand Worlds where iconic brands created remarkable experiences for their fans and communities, inviting them to engage and co-create together. Always at the center of culture, always moving at the speed of technology. Our first-of-its-kind SNICKERS campaign stood as a testament to this, delivering consumer co-creation and personalization at a scale that had been unimaginable until very recently, before GenAI became part of our toolbox. I was very proud of our brand builders for embracing the possibilities, enhancing creativity, and doing it responsibly. As we navigated this new frontier of AI-enhanced brand building, it was crucial that we kept a pioneering mindset tempered by caution, always putting safety and ethics first.”
The campaign was launched with social videos of the real José on SNICKERS and José’s social channels during the Champions League Final and in the build-up to the Euros.
It was supported by posts from influencers sharing and reacting to their own José videos created using the tool, along with 6” paid and organic social posts directing fans to generate their own videos. Users were encouraged to share links to their bespoke videos with friends and in group chats.
Unlike typical football tournament sponsorships, this fan-centric approach had used fans to amplify the brand’s message. The campaign was part of Mars Wrigley’s strategy of putting personalization and fandom at the heart of its “world-building” strategy for SNICKERS. By involving fans in the co-creation process, the brand developed a deeper relationship with consumers, driving exponential social sharing and conversation.
The campaign had marked another significant step towards SNICKERS achieving its goal of becoming the number one confectionery brand for football fans by the end of 2025.
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