Box of Snickers sent to Jeremy Clarkson along with note: ‘you’re not you when you’re hungry’

By Rich Leigh on Friday, March 13, 2015

With all the current furore (in the UK) regarding Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s assault of a show producer for – allegedly – refusing him a hot meal, Snickers spotted an opportunity.

Some of you might have seen the brand’s ‘you’re not you when you’re hungry’ campaign, which has been running in its TV ads for a year or two. With Clarkson, the perfect (and cheap) opportunity for reactive PR appears to have arisen:

.@JeremyClarkson you may want to have some of these on set next time you are #hungry… pic.twitter.com/Vxihd6k9lt

— Snickers (@SnickersUK) March 12, 2015

It made me smile, but then PR pal Sean Fleming raised the very good point that he’s not sure ‘disciplinary matters and allegations of violence lend themselves to stunts’. Good reactive stunts are all about judgement. Although this one seems to be going down well, it’s worth saying that although all seems to have fallen in place with this reactive effort, from the perfect relevance to the fact Clarkson is so popular people are almost forgetting, as I did, that he is said to have actually assaulted a man, in 99 out of 100 other similar efforts, you might come up short, which just isn’t worth the risk for a few hundred retweets.