There’s been a lot of marketing buzz about the recent massive Snickers campaign using distinctive made-up words without any actual mention of the brand itself. Snickers, owned by Mars, Inc., has billboards, bus & taxi ads along with broadcast commercials relying on font and color recognition to promote their brand.

There are many blog posts about the campaign, both good and bad. Personally, I’m impressed. My first thoughts are the actual strategy behind the campaign must be to reinforce the brand. This is obvious since anyone not already familiar with the candy bar would have no idea what they were looking at. Words like Nougatocity and Peanutopolis would be confusing to those that don’t recognize the brand’s distinctive, yet very plain, image.

What impressed me, even though they’ve had millions of dollars and years to do it, is how successful the Snicker’s branding actually is. Just the simple font and colors are enough to generate instant recognition for millions of people. Well, that and I like the candy bar