World’s best ads ever #20: Hollywood star Betty White hits the mud in famous Snickers cameo
We asked our readers to vote for their favorite commercials of all time. Top creatives from the World Creative Rankings and The Drum’s Judges’ Club then ranked the ads. Now, we bring you the definitive 100 best TV and video ads of all time.
In one of the most iconic celebrity endorsements in advertising history, the late, great Betty White takes a tumble in the mud for Snickers’ 2010 Super Bowl ad.
For the 30-second spot, the Golden Girls star, then 88 years old, is in the role of Mike, a young man playing amateur football with a group of friends. After he falls, a friend yells in hilarious irony, “Mike, you’re playing like Betty White out there!”, to which White’s character responds, “That’s not what your girlfriend said!”
Mike’s presumed girlfriend, having recognized his hungry state, hands ‘him’ a Snickers, which rejuvenates and transforms Mike from resembling Betty White, back to himself again. The ad takes the joke further as another friend on the field suddenly becomes an old man, suggesting that he is hungry and therefore not himself.
The legendary ad is part of the candy bar brand’s global campaign, ‘You Aren’t You When You’re Hungry’. Created by BBDO New York in 2012, it’s lauded as one of the most successful, if not the most successful, global campaigns of all time.
The spot wasn’t just a great PR stunt for Snickers. Although White was already a Hollywood legend at the time of the ad’s airing, this was widely considered her introduction to the younger generation. Following the Super Bowl, nearly one million people signed a Facebook petition for White to become the oldest host of Saturday Night Live. And it worked.
On May 8, 2010, White hosted SNL with musical guest Jay-Z to an audience of more than 12 million people. NBC re-aired the episode in 2022 following her death one week prior.