Mars is embracing temporary re-naming os Snickers like plenty of other food companies to give shoppers an additional reason to purchase. A Snickers bar labelled as a chocolate bar called Absurd turns the Snickers into a fun gift for someone, thereby expanding the reach of their product.
This is a smart marketing move, not trail-blazing, but certainly smart. Retailers have the promotional product at the counter for impulse purchase.
In our own patch, we have seen Smiggle, Typo and others follow a similar model of getting people to buy more of an item than they would by focussing on product design over function.
The more reasons there can be to purchase an item the better. Emotional reasons are the best as they are more likely to drive impulse purchases.
It worked well for Coca-Cola with putting people’s names on Coke bottles and such (I still have labels with my name on it from the promo sitting in my box of random bits just because of how cool they are)