In People Magazine an ad was posted for Mars Inc., featuring Snickers’ Marathon energy bar. The Mars Company created a bar for people who lead an active lifestyle, but also creating a bar that tastes like candy, and healthy as well.

In the ad the text says, “Success doesn’t come to you-you go to it. Except if you eat a bad-tasting energy bar, you ain’t going anywhere.” One doesn’t have to eat an energy bar to become successful in life. Life is complicated and needs more than energy bar for a simple fix. Aint isn’t a word making the target audience lower middle class that isn’t well educated. The picture shows a football player running up the stairs of a football stadium. The hidden text is in the person shown. He needed more than a performance bar to get where he is today. Snickers created a bar for world-class athletes that are running marathons. The picture doesn’t fit the description of this performance bar, because the person shown isn’t a runner. The ad is glamorized by the beautiful person shown. By eating a bar isn’t going to make one look as good as the person presented. The performance and energy bar is placed above the black background with a yellow focal point drawing one’s eyes to it.

Mars Inc. created a bar that is suitable for white male athletes. “We recognized that there were many Americans who expend as much energy in the course of their day as world-class athletes do running marathons.”

There are three tools used in this ad: card stacking, simple solutions and beautiful people. Using an energy or performance bar is a simple solution for people to become fit. Card stacking comes into play when they say eating a bar is all you need to succeed. This is completely false. The football player represented in the picture represents beautiful people creating a sense of insecurity, making people buy the bar to look like the football player. Having beautiful people persuades one to value physical image.

The Mars Company is trying to create a health message, but with chocolate? To be fit one needs substances that replenish their body. A person is persuaded to believe that one bar, receives high protein, vitamins and minerals needed in a day. The part that isn’t being told is if a person wants to become fit the body needs a combination of exercise and eating right to accomplish that goal.