Increas­ing­ly, brands are try­ing to insert them­selves into the con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen­ing around trend­ing top­ics. Smart brands now rec­og­nize the val­ue of engag­ing con­sumers on social media in real-time, but often the cre­ativ­i­ty is lack­ing. Luck­i­ly, Snick­ers shows the pre­tenders how it’s done with a clever new tweet that has received a lot of love from Twit­ter users and ties into its “You’re not you when you’re hun­gry” cam­paign.

Snick­ers have inge­nious­ly cap­i­tal­ized on one of the biggest sto­ries of the week, the BBC’s sus­pen­sion of “Top Gear” pre­sen­ter Jere­my Clark­son, who alleged­ly hit the show’s pro­duc­er. Check out Snick­ers’ tweet pok­ing fun at the sto­ry:

.@JeremyClarkson you may want to have some of these on set next time you are #hun­gry… pic.twitter.com/Vxihd6k9lt — Snick­ers (@SnickersUK) March 12, 2015

With reports emerg­ing that Clark­son lost his tem­per after a dis­agree­ment over his sup­per, Snick­er’s stunt is laced with wit, rel­e­vance, and cheeky charm.

And the social net­work is lov­ing it; at time of writ­ing the tweet has already amassed more than 3,200 retweets and 2,400 favorites.

The mes­sage in red on the box plays into the brand’s “You’re not you when you’re hun­gry” cam­paign, in which var­i­ous celebri­ties act inap­pro­pri­ate­ly due to hunger before eat­ing a Snick­ers bar. The slo­gan debuted at 2010 Super Bowl:

UK audi­ences were treat­ed to a ver­sion star­ring Joan Collins, which debuted in 2012:

The adver­tise­ments gained a great deal of trac­tion with con­sumers; Cam­paign cre­ators Medi­a­Com report­ed that “over the 12 weeks of the launch cam­paign, we saw an increase in the num­ber of Snick­ers sin­gles sold in the Impulse chan­nel; 705,000 more bars than last year. We’ve also seen dou­ble dig­it growth in val­ue sales in some chan­nels.”

Real-Time Social Media Amplification

The tweet fur­ther ampli­fies what was already a high­ly suc­cess­ful cam­paign for the con­fec­tionary brand, and is the lat­est exam­ple of brands uti­liz­ing real-time social media mar­ket­ing react­ing to cur­rent events with speed and agili­ty.

Just a cou­ple of weeks ago, it was a bad pic­ture of a ques­tion­ably-hued gar­ment that set the Twit­ter-sphere alight. #The­Dress saw all kinds of brands join­ing in the debate to get some atten­tion. When the right tweet can mean mil­lions of engage­ments and new fol­low­ers, brands today are increas­ing­ly rec­og­niz­ing the val­ue of clever, cre­ative, real-time Twit­ter mar­ket­ing.