When your scruffy, half-frozen future self travels back in time with a message of life-changing import, what are you going to do?
Scarf down a Snickers, of course!
That's the plot of this ad for the Mars candy bar from Impact BBDO in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which puts a different spin on the time-tested "You're Not You When You're Hungry" template.
"Like anything in life, preventing something from happening in the first place is the best cure," agency executive creative director Fadi Yaish tells AdFreak. "We're saying to people to go grab a bar and avoid any unforeseen consequences your hungry behavior might bring you, such as ending up marooned in an isolated research outpost in the South Pole."
Suitably cinematic direction by Good People's Maged Nassar really brings the silly story of temporal trippiness to life:
Wait, shouldn't that future dude vanish as soon as our cube-monkey hero takes a bite? Does Mr. White Collar with the rumbling tum actually escape his frozen fate? Has their presence together at the same moment in history caused a cosmic rift that will rip the universe apart?
Most important, will that office building ever get better security so ice-encrusted whack-jobs can't just roam the corridors at will?
"It was important for us to make the central character and his hunger trait as relatable as possible throughout, so we opted this time to not use any crazy characters," Yaish says. "We also made our protagonist give himself the bar, as we felt it added another nice dimension to the platform. After all, no one knows who you become when you're hungry better than you do."
CREDITS
Client: Mars/Snickers
Agency: Impact BBDO
Fadi Yaish: Executive Creative Director
Jamie Kennaway: Creative Director
Stephanus De Lange: Creative Director
Samantha Stuart-Palmer: General Manager
Frances McCabe: Regional Account Director
Lina Ghulam: Senior Account Manager
Ashwin Ahuja: Group Planning Director
Production House: Good People
Director: Maged Nassar
Executive Producers: Michel Abou Zeid & Cynthia Chammas
DOP: Pierre Mouarkesh
Post Production: Lizard VFX Shop, Cairo
Editor: Amr Rabee
Grading: Karim Mira
Online: Lizard VFX shot, Cairo
Music & Sound Design: The Garage, Cairo
VO: Sounds Struck, Dubai