The COMPLETE Story of The SNICKERS Candy Bar!

[0:00]The Snickers bar is one of the most popular candy bars in the world, but the story of how this candy titan got its name is even sweeter than the chocolate bar itself. Let's start with a man named Frank Mars, born in Minnesota in 1883. He was a sickly child, so he often stayed home with his mother and he found interest in making candy with his mom in the kitchen. Fast forward a little bit and he would graduate high school and immediately he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to make candy. He began making his candy, selling it to people in the local community. And then he would end up marrying a woman named Ethel. Frank and Ehel would end up selling candy out of their own home, making same day orders and deliveries for people in the local community. In 1920, the Mars couple would end up moving from Tacoma, Washington back to Frank's hometown state of Minnesota. There they started a company called the Mar O Bar Company, and this company would eventually evolve into what you know today as Mars Incorporated. So a little bit more background information that is crucial to the development of Snickers. Frank and Ehel developed the Milky Way bar in the 1920s. This was their first widely successful candy bar, and it really paved the way for the Snickers later on. So they took the profits from this Milky Way and they decided to expand the business. But before they did that, they purchased a 3,000 acre horse farm in Tennessee to pursue their other passion of breeding racehorses. While spending time on this farm, the couple decided to experiment with different chocolate bars to come up with a new bar that they would hope would sell just as well as Milky Way. And over the course of three years, they would perfect the recipe for the peanut nougat-based chocolate bar that you know today. But of course, even with the recipe, they had the hard job of naming this candy bar. It just so happened that Ehel was a big fan of these racehorses that they were raising and her favorite racehorse was named Snickers. Unfortunately, Snickers died about two months before the launch of the actual candy bar, but as an homage to Ehel and to the horse, Frank decided to name the candy bar after the horse. Snickers. Originally, they made the Snickers bar by pouring peanut butter nougat into a large tray and layering it with caramel and peanuts. Hand slicing that then layered sheet of candy and then dipping it into a chocolate mix. And that's how they made the original Snickers. Of course, it would end up getting industrialized and now machines run the whole operation. But when they first started creating it, they were doing all the candy by hand, which is really not something strange for the couple. Like I mentioned earlier, they were doing candy out of their kitchen for years prior. So it's just another candy for them. But immediately, this combination of nougat, caramel and peanuts was an extremely popular hit among everybody in the community. They couldn't get enough of it and they kept buying it. And so really, it just made the profits for the Mars couple soar. And you saw other bars try to match its popularity, but nobody could keep up at the time. But after World War II, wholesome shows were very much the norm for entertainment at the time. And Snickers really had a big jump in popularity whenever it sponsored the Howdy Duty Show from 1949 to 1952. This is a time whenever Snickers was able to get in front of tons of people with television sets growing in popularity, was the best possible marketing play for the new candy. Another huge leap for Snickers popularity and another ode to their marketing prowess was whenever Mars Company paid $5 million to make Snickers the official snack of the 1984 Olympics. What this did for the brand is it put it in front of the eyes of people all around the world, and it had a huge impact on an international popularity for Snickers, as you could imagine. Today, the best-selling candy bar brings in about $2 billion for the Mars Company annually. It's continued success is attributed not only to the delicious flavors, but also to their extremely impressive marketing prowess. As we mentioned earlier, they've had incredibly successful campaigns, and the one that is the most successful right now, as I'm sure you're familiar with, is the tagline, You're not you when you're hungry. They've been running this tagline with different commercial variations for years now, and it's incredibly successful. This campaign can be attributed to increased sales of 15.9%. Revenue also increased in 56 of their 58 markets around the world. So it just goes to show not only how important marketing is, but how great the Mars company and the Snickers brand is at marketing their candies. And if you're interested, check out this other history video right here, and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Cheers.