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Snickers returns as presenting sponsor for WWE’s flagship event.
Photo by: COURTESY OF WWE
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Mars’ Snickers brand has renewed as presenting sponsor of WWE’s flagship WrestleMania event, scheduled for April 2 at Orlando’s Camping World Stadium.
The renewal includes a commitment for longtime Snickers agency BBDO, New York, to create a pair of ads using WWE talent as part of its “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign, which debuted on the 2010 Super Bowl. Those WWE-themed ads should break in February and will be seen on WWE Network, on WWE programming on USA Network, and on WWE digital and social platforms. Snickers has been a WWE television advertiser for more than a decade.
Snickers will also leverage with a takeover of WWE’s YouTube channel on the day of WrestleMania and will support and participate in the four-day fan fest that runs prior to WrestleMania. Retail-specific promotions are also expected.
Last year, there was a national promotion with Wal-Mart and that deal was finalized less than two months before WrestleMania.
Allison Miazga-Bedrick, director of the Snickers brand, said last year’s presenting sponsorship yielded more than 1.5 billion impressions across various media, digital and social platforms. “We had a great success in year one,” she said.
“We had great impressions, social activation and it got our brand in places it wouldn’t otherwise be.”
She added that the key performance indicators will be fan excitement, engagement, overall buzz and talk around the brand. “It’s great to correlate to sales, if you can get that, but we’re looking to make our [Snickers] brand relevant and to make sure it gets out there from a social media perspective,” she said.
Snickers’ other sports sponsorships include an NFL league deal, a NASCAR team relationship around Kyle Busch and sponsorship of WME-IMG and Turner Sports’ ELeague.
Prior to Snickers’ presenting sponsorship at the most recent WrestleMania, WWE hadn’t sold a presenting sponsorship to its flagship event since 2010.
“We delivered results for a top brand at our biggest event and you have to believe our retail integration delivered sales or there is no renewal,” said John Brody, WWE executive vice president of global sales and partnerships, noting that the most recent WrestleMania was the highest-grossing, most-attended and most-watched ever, and also set a mark for merchandise revenue with $4.5 million in sales.
