Advertising News South Africa

JWT scores a break with Nestlé Kit Kat

Challenged to sell an additional eight million Kit Kats during 2008, Nestlé tasked JWT to conceptualise a promotion to drive repeat purchases of Kit Kat 4-Finger and Kit Kat Chunky. The brief stipulated that Nestlé's long-term brand strategy of ‘Have a break, have a Kit Kat' positioning, be maintained.

Kit Kat is the chocolate renowned for giving the consumer that envied moment of satisfaction during their break. "Leveraging off this concept, JWT conceptualised an innovative through-the-line campaign allowing Kit Kat consumers to win and 'score a break'," explains Davina Wertheimer, Business Unit Director of JWT Johannesburg.

JWT's challenge was to engage with both Kit Kat 4-Finger and Kit Kat Chunky consumers, across students and urban women aged 18 to 44 years. "Due to the added value nature of the promotion, it was intended also to ‘speak' to non Kit Kat consumers, to encourage brand switching which would grow the KIT KAT consumer base and encourage brand loyalty thereafter," she adds.

Luring consumers, JWT launched the innovative Kit Kat 'Score a Break' national promotion running from July to October. Having purchased promotionally marked Kit Kat products and entered the unique code printed inside the pack to *120*KITKAT#, or registered online at www.kitkat.co.za, consumers stood to win a share of R1 million in instant airtime packages.

"The competition results are phenomenal - tens of thousands of unique cellphone entries were received, giving Nestlé the opportunity to continue building a learning and mutually beneficial relationship with its Kit Kat consumers," says Wertheimer.

"A magnificent redemption rate of 3.5% of unique codes were submitted, and 4-Finger Kit Kat was sold out a month before the promotion ended," she adds.

JWT's overall objective was to make more people "Have a break, have a Kit Kat “, more often. It achieved this by using USSD mobile technology as the primary entry conduit to the competition. “This meant increased mobile handset usability and ease of entry, at lower cost, versus the typical SMS VAS (Value Added Services) rates. The addition of backend functionality allowed for loyalty-based points accumulation and instant feedback,” she adds.

To qualify for the two grand prizes of R75 000 cash each, entrants had to accumulate at least 25 ‘break points' over the promotional period. One unique code was equivalent to five break points. Consumers therefore had to accumulate their points until they reached 25.

Other elements of the campaign included television, radio, point of sale and online. And the WOW factor? “The results!" Wertheimer concludes.

  • USSD is the same platform one uses to redeem or purchase pre-paid airtime. The cost to the entrant is 20c/20sec as opposed to SMS, which can be anything from R1 upwards.

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