2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ has been KitKat’s slogan for years, and for so long, the brand was the only player tapping into the break occasion. Recently, the category started to decline, and in an attempt to create excitement amongst our audience and get them to consume more, KitKat has been focusing on launching innovations rather than supporting its core equity and platform. This allowed other brands to gain traction in the ‘break’ territory and threatened to affect our core business. We needed to react and reclaim back the ‘Break Territory’ in a way that was never done before.

Describe the strategy

With the category being driven by impulse, we needed to breakthrough using a distinctive approach to communications. Our core audience are 18-34 year-olds (Gen Z + Millennials). They are heavy consumers of YouTube. In fact, Saudi Arabia has the highest YouTube watch time per capita globally. Their expectations from the platform are two-fold: *These youngsters turn to YouTube “to consume content that hits closer to home” making personalized content that speaks to individuals even more important in driving proximity. *We know that people ‘break’ online and search YouTube to pass the time and discover new videos to watch and share. Their frustration? Ads that come in the way of those breaks. While every other brand is focusing on giving ‘people a break’, we needed to find an alternative space that would still be relevant to both our audience and our brand. Our idea: 'Give Technology a break'.

Describe the execution

Using Data, we pinpointed the 200 most researched topics on YouTube in the region… And in different languages: Saudi, Egyptian and English. We launched around 50 contextual video ads on YouTube; and served our audiences these films based on the searches they had entered within the platform itself. And who better to star in them than the ‘Youtube guy’ himself? No matter what the audience searched for, they would see our character promising to play their videos… after his break. And each message was personalized. Whether it was sports highlights, or a makeup tutorial, he had them covered. If someone was searching for makeup tutorials, the pre-roll would show a man sitting on his desk enjoying a KitKat while videos of makeup tutorials are covering the wall behind him. He would then apologize and ask them to wait until he was done with his break. And the list goes on.

List the results

By hypertargeting content based on relevant searches, and personifying a ‘reach-based’ platform to make it more engaging and personal, KitKat proved that a great break is truly un-skippable : 98.7M Impressions 45,5M Unique users 14.8% Recall (versus benchmark 11%) 6.8% Awareness (vs benchmark 3-5%)