Brand: Snickers
Campaign: Snickers Own Goal
Format: New Brand Platform
Agency: T&P
Launch Date: 2024
My Role: Client Creative Strategy
SNICKERS OWN GOAL
Turning football fans’ everyday mistakes into a new European brand platform.
Activation Overview
Ahead of a huge summer of football, we launched Own Goal, a new European football platform for Snickers starring Bukayo Saka and Luka Modrić.
Built around the mistakes fans make when they’re not quite themselves, the campaign translated Snickers’ long-running brand territory into the language and culture of football.
From missing a goal while queuing for food to celebrating at exactly the wrong moment, every self-inflicted mistake became an “Own Goal”.
The answer?
Own Goal? Maybe you just need a Snickers.
The platform launched across 46 markets in Europe and MEA through TV, OOH, paid and organic social and PR.
The Challenge
ROOKIE MISTAKES
worked in America.
But what did a mistake look like
in European football?
Snickers had already found success in the US with its NFL “Rookie Mistakes” campaign. Our challenge was to take the core thinking behind it and create something that could belong to football across Europe.
But “Rookie Mistakes” didn’t translate culturally. The phrase lacked the same resonance across European markets, creating a bigger strategic question: how could we find a universally understood football expression for those ridiculous mistakes people make when they’re not quite themselves?
We needed an idea that could connect naturally to Snickers, travel across languages and cultures, and give the brand a platform capable of living beyond a single tournament.
Creative Summary
We found our answer in one of football’s most universally understood mistakes.
The Own Goal.
We took a piece of football language normally reserved for mistakes on the pitch and applied it to the everyday blunders fans make off it.
Double-booking date night on match day. Leaving early and missing the comeback. Buying food just before the winning goal. Arriving at the stadium with your digital ticket and 1% battery.
They were all Own Goals.
That gave Snickers a simple, repeatable way to enter football conversation while remaining connected to its established brand idea: when you’re not quite yourself, maybe you just need a Snickers.
The Concept
Everyone scores an Own Goal sometimes.
To introduce the platform, we partnered with two players who represented the opposite of making mistakes on the pitch: Bukayo Saka and Luka Modrić.
Their role was simple.
Spot the Own Goal. Call it out. Sort it with a Snickers.
The pairing also gave the campaign two personalities who could bounce off each other across film, OOH and social, becoming recurring messengers for the platform rather than conventional celebrity endorsements.
The idea gave Snickers an expandable creative territory built around a behaviour every football fan could recognise.
Because you don’t need to be playing football to score an Own Goal.
The Executiuon
The hero film brought the idea to life through one painfully relatable mistake.
A fan watches his team while getting his hair cut. When they score, instinct takes over. He leaps out of the barber’s chair to celebrate.
The clippers don’t stop.
He sits back down with a strip missing from his hair.
Enter the barbershop’s newest recruit, Bukayo Saka, to point out the spectacular Own Goal, followed by Luka Modrić with the solution: a Snickers.
Producing the film created an Own Goal-sized challenge of its own. Saka and Modrić’s schedules meant they couldn’t shoot together, so the production was reworked and filmed separately in London and Spain, with lighting, performance and environments carefully matched to make the final film feel like a single scene.
Beyond the hero film, we built the idea across the football experience.
Saka and Modrić rated common fan Own Goals from one to ten, from missing a goal because you went for a hot dog too early to reaching the stadium with your ticket trapped on a dying phone. They even shared some of their own mistakes.
The wider campaign extended through TVC, OOH, digital, paid and organic social, PR and in-store activity, creating a consistent visual and verbal system capable of working across markets.
Impact
Own Goal launched at scale across 46 markets in Europe and MEA, establishing a new football platform for Snickers rather than a one-off tournament campaign.
Its strategic ambition extended beyond the 2024 football calendar. We described the campaign as a way to build long-term momentum and credibility for Snickers within football, while the team identified Own Goal as a territory with the potential to generate ongoing fan banter.
The original launch was explicitly positioned as the first year of the European Own Goal platform, with further activity planned for 2025 and beyond.
That platform subsequently provided the foundation for Snickers to develop new football experiences, including Mourinho’s Own Goal No-No’s.
Recognition
The launch received coverage across the advertising, production and retail press, including Creative Salon, Little Black Book and Better Retailing.
More importantly, Own Goal established a new European football platform for Snickers. Rather than ending with the 2024 campaign, the territory was deliberately designed to evolve through future football moments.
