Why is this work relevant for Media?

How can a brand grab more of its audience’s attention despite having much less to spend? By leveraging the earliest form of free media in a big, impactful way: packaging. With other sweets spending more and encroaching on break times, Kitkat’s business was in crisis. This case shows how a simple but fiendishly clever packaging idea, placed through the perfect distribution outlets turn Kitkat’s double-digit decline into its highest sales of all time. By turning each bar into an everyday emotional emergency packet, Kitkat addressed its own crisis and helped everyone else with theirs.

Background

Kitkat entered emergency mode in 2018. This was due to intense competitive heat, with major competitors increasing their spend in order to win. Kitkat had become overlooked as a break time treat. It started the year with double-digit decline in monthly sales, and by June, monthly sales was down -13% vs. previous period. The goal was to reverse the declining sales – in the quickest and most effective way possible.

Describe the creative idea/insights (30% of vote)

We needed to find a way for people to take notice of Kitkat again. So, we revisited why Filipinos needed to take breaks. We found that often it was triggered by emotional emergencies. From running into their ex, awkward family reunions, to getting seenzoned. Moments like these, they need a break to compose themselves and soothe their feelings. And with Filipinos’ predisposition to sweets, they often did it with a sweet treat. The idea was to turn Kitkat into emotional emergency supply. This way, we could give Filipinos a break from whatever was causing distress whenever it struck, and make Kitkat more relevant in their everyday lives once again.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We wanted to make use of the medium that would best signal Kitkat as an emergency supply: packaging. Since we needed to turn the business around quickly, we designed sleeves that bore a special instruction: “Break in case of”. These would be cheaper than traditional advertising, and faster to produce than a product innovation. We targeted young adults with this effort because we knew they experienced little emotional emergencies most frequently. They led lives riddled with tension as they were transitioning from adolescence into adulthood. We turned to social listening to find the most relevant emotional emergencies we could help them with. Through it we found the most common everyday rants that popped up most frequently, which we turned into the emergencies that went onto the sleeves. We crafted instructions to triggers specific to location and to the season to make sure our audience would take notice.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We went where Filipinos turned to for emergency supplies: convenience stores. Filipinos go when they’re in a pinch. It was also where the young often purchase Kitkat. We maximized the store for placements. With the solid block of red from our sleeves, we turned our shelves into mini-billboards advertising our emergency supplies. We placed them near the POS and behind the counter with other emergency items like cigarettes. Sleeves were distributed depending on where they would be relevant. For example, in districts where traffic is bad, we placed “Break in case of Carmageddon” (Car + Armageddon) sleeves. Around universities, we played on student woes, like “Break in case of didnotsave.doc”. The packaging was intentionally designed to be meme-able. We knew social media-crazy Filipinos would not be able to resist and do the marketing push for us. We supported this with just enough content to maintain awareness levels for the brand.

List the results (30% of vote)

Plummeting sales were turned around immediately. July saw sales growth of 9.2%, and by the time October came, month on month sales were up by 20.76%. At the end of the 5-month campaign period, we had sold over 300 tons of product. And for every peso we spent on the sleeves, we got 10.8 back in sales.