… Ever found yourself scrolling through your facebook feed, or tapping through Instagram stories to be stopped in your tracks at the site of a mouthwatering new food product? Us too!

…Have you then later realised that the food product advertised doesn’t even exist?... If so, then we hate to break it to you, but you’ve been snackfished!

But what exactly is snackfishing?

‍Inspired by the term catfishing which The Urban Dictionary depicts as ‘fabricating an online identity’ – snackfishing is built upon the same premise, yet instead of a person fabricating an identity, a food product has been fabricated. So why would any brand or person want to do this?

As heart-breaking as it is to discover that the delicious snack taking the internet storm is in fact as fad, there’s no denying that this stunt is a fantastic way to gain internet clout and spark new consumer interest. Plus, the circulation of a snackfish across various media can even allow a brand to gauge how well received a product is before it’s released.

One key chocolate brand has in fact just released a new product which is very VERY similar to its most recent snackfish to have taken the internet by storm… coincidence? We think not. Smart route to new product development? Absolutely!

So is snackfishing good for marketing and PR?... I suppose that really does depend where the snackfish has come from! If it’s an internal creation created by the brand to create a buzz ahead of a product launch, then perhaps so… if it’s fake news created externally, all the snackfish will do is raise the hopes of public for no reason, which of course can be damaging for a brand-customer relationship.