Case Studies

Nestle Kit Kat Chunky – Kit Kat Chunky Cookies & Cream: Kit Kat Chunga Agency: JWT Sydney / RMG Connect Sydney

Introduction Against the backdrop of a highly competitive and cluttered chocolate bar market, effectively launching Kit Kat Chunky Cookies and Cream with $500K seemed to be a significant challenge. A series of bold strategic decisions overcame this challenge; in an Australian FMCG first, Cookies and Cream was launched as a 100% digital campaign that aimed to build consumer connection over product news, leveraging synergy between media and creative in the social media environment. A consumer connection was undoubtedly achieved, driving huge shifts in brand tracking metrics, with sales exceeding target by 150%, delivering a rigorous campaign ROI of 6.2.

Challenges This is a case study that demonstrates the power of making brave yet well considered strategic decisions. This is a case study that demonstrates how creating even short moments of engagement and conversation can be incredibly powerful and persuasive, even when the conversation contains little persuasive product news. This is a case study that demonstrates media and message synergy in the digital space can generate huge impact with little spend. This is a story about the adventure that was the launch of a new Kit Kat Chunky variant, Cookies and Cream. Kit Kat Chunky finds itself stuck between a rock and hard place. The big eat nature of the product means its natural targeting is 12–24 y/o men, who love to eat big, 'refuelling' chocolate bars. However, Chunky's equity is borne from its parent brand, Kit Kat, who has always appealed to an older audience looking for a simple, light, snackable eat. Chunky has always been trying to step out from behind its master brand to make this so-needed connection with a younger audience, without damaging either Chunky's taste and quality heritage or Kit Kat's equity. Put simply, for 12–24 y/o men, the Kit Kat Chunky brand is not as relevant or as loved as a number of other chocolate bar brands, brands that spend a significant amount of cash… Chunky shares a broad product truth that groups it together into a category segment labelled 'refuel', defined by characteristics such as 'big eat' & 'satisfying'. Within the refuel segment, the major brands are Mars, Snickers, Boost, Picnic, Milo and Chunky. In 2007 the bars category spent approx. $7.3M in media, and in 2008, $3.6M, with the spend dominated by Chunky's key competitors, Mars and Snickers.1

Challenges Meanwhile Kit Kat Chunky sales were in danger of contracting with the impending deletion of 3 SKU's. We needed to make our $500K launch work hard to ensure these deletions did not lead to a loss in sales. However, because of the cluttered and noisy market, it was going to be challenging to gain any real traction. We were going to need to make some bold strategic choices from the get-go. The task was to launch a new Cookies and Cream variant of Chunky into the highly competitive refuel chocolate bars market. Clearly, we needed this variant to appeal to our 12–24y/o men, not just to ensure sales of the variant itself, but to ensure that the campaign and variant had the positive halo effect on perceptions of Chunky with this critical audience. Incremental sales were the ultimate goal, but given the broader brand challenge, competitive environment and small budget, realistic targets were set at a profitable launch of Cookies and Cream that had a halo effect on brand perceptions. This meant $3M in sales in the 6months post launch, essentially $3M before the end of 2008. We needed to make the $500K budget work hard in the face of a big spending category, full of well loved brands. Conservative was not going to cut it; $500K in a typical ATL campaign wasn't going to get the cut-through. Excitement, engagement and impact were the order of the strategy…

The Solution The first bold, unusual decision we made was to let media strategy lead our engagement strategy. Given the limited dollars, the tight targeting and collective feeling that typical ATL was not going to work, this approach would enable us to make the most of our investment. Kit Kat Chunky had long used humour to help our target to 'break the boredom' (see image 1), and it was critical that we continued to build this core equity. This positioning was based upon the truth that young men often snack during downtime for entertainment, to alleviate boredom. We recognised that this thought had relevance to their social lives as well. Preserving their status at the heart of their peer group is central to their lives; helping them break their mates' boredom – as well as their own – became the backbone of the media strategy.

The Solution Image 1: Historical 'Break the Boredom' Kit Kat Chunky Creative Digital technology had allowed our target to be better networked than ever, their social affairs now extensively conducted online and to extended peer groups. Digital seemed like a prime media opportunity to help our 12–24y/o men break the 'collective boredom'. Furthermore, given category media spending behaviour, it was very likely that there would be relatively little competitive noise online at the time of launch (even just 6 months on, digital is now cluttered). The second bold choice of our Cookies and Cream adventure was to go where no one at Nestle had ever gone before and recommend an exclusive investment into digital. At the time of planning (12 months in the making), no other FMCG company in Australia had attempted such a move into digital. This created an enormous challenge to both the Agencies and our brave Client who worked collaboratively to get a campaign with such a seismic shift away from convention through the various stakeholders and levels of approval which were required.

The Solution Digital communication strategy typically spends media money driving people to a destination website, which can often be an effective strategy. However, with this target audience and the need to enter their online social arena, this typical online strategy seemed inefficient. Did we really need to get our audience to come to us? Surely it would be better to go to them? In fact, we realised that if we went to them then this would free up a large proportion of our total budget. Instead of investing the lions share into media, we could significantly increase our production budget and develop a campaign that might just be able to engage and entertain enough to create the social currency that we so desired; if we could achieve this, then we didn't need to worry about limited media spend, we would become part of their online social world. The third bold decision we made was to invest approximately 50% of our total budget into production to give the creative the best chance to engage and entertain. Compared to both typical digital and ATL spending splits, this was an adventurous decision by Nestle. This left $250K, 50% of our budget to invest with online media partners with which our audience had existing relationships with such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube (final costs in media plan is $350K2, which includes a significant investment into media-owned production within specific destinations, e.g. MySpace. Estimated media / production splits are 50/50). We now needed a creative strategy and idea to maximise our presence in these environments.

The Solution The fourth bold decision of the Cookies and Cream launch was not make product messaging central to the communication. A typical product launch messaging strategy would be to find a rational point of difference or product truth and make this the hero of the execution. While effective at announcement and establishing a product, it is often difficult to make this approach engaging and entertaining. Given these objectives were paramount we discounted this rational strategic approach. Rather, it made sense to integrate and leverage our brand and media strategy. 'Break the boredom' was the creative point of entry, with Cookies and Cream being the hero product, not the hero message. The creative department was given the thought 'Chunky Cookies and Cream is the big hit that breaks the boredom.' Hans Fagerlund and the Chunga championship were born. Revolving around an invented sport called 'Chunga' (Chunky-Game), the product became the playing piece in the hands of the games greatest player, Hans Fagerlund.

The Solution Image 2: Hans Fagerlund To bring Hans to life, we created a social media marketing strategy to get everyone talking, laughing, competing, recommending and coming back for more. We needed to weave Hans and the Chunga game into the fabric of our target's online social lives for the campaign to become social currency. Contact with one, would inevitably stimulate engagement with the other. The central story of the campaign was told through a 5-part mockumentary film called 'Chunga-Struck' on video sharing sites. The film provided the back story to 'Chunga' while recruiting consumers to play the web based Chunga game against Hans, friends & other players in real time. This was a tournament designed specifically around users of social networking sites.

Summary of Media Strategy Across Paid and Unpaid Media Extensive and detailed media messaging strategies were utilised, from Hans having his own social networking profiles, to search engine marketing, to downloadable applications, to promotion within the online gaming scene to classical banner and road-block media buying to drive reach. Importantly, all aspects of the campaign worked together to create a seamless integration. In totality, the strategic and creative solution had been a collection of brave yet cohesive decisions. Chunga represented a serious adventure for Agencies and Nestle alike. We were excited to see what impact the campaign would have.

The Results There are three key layers to be examined to effectively analyse this campaign. Online metrics: Reach and frequency, engagement & entertainment (social currency) Campaign and brand tracking: Conversion into mass awareness, consideration, sentiment, preference and intention to purchase. Sales: Cookies and Cream & brand sales, ROI

The Results Online Metrics The reach and frequency of this $500K campaign was impressive. With a total reach of 736,000, Chunga reached 46% of 12–24 y/o's at an average frequency of 12 impressions. These impressions undoubtedly led to engagement. Over 250,000 messenger theme packs were downloaded, which led to over 11 million winks being traded between friends. 67,121 people visited and interacted with the significant content destinations (microsite, MySpace & Youtube). The game generated 44,000 total game plays at an average playing time of 7mins. From 30secs with a banner to 7mins playing the game, to 3mins watching the webisodes, we achieved a significant amount of interaction time against this audience online3. Between the gaming and theme packs it seems that we had gone some way to achieving our goal of becoming social currency with one third of all people that Chunga touched. Highly involved engagement with the campaign was also strong, a good indication that the impressions made across the broader reach of the campaign would have connected with our consumer.

The Results Campaign and Brand Tracking Results A significant campaign tracking study used a total sample of 900 people, split into an exposed and control group (498 & 402 respectively). Of these, 75% fell into our target audience of 12–24y/o's4. When the campaign tracking first hit we nearly fell of our chairs; as the online metrics rolled in we became excited by the reach and interaction, but with the adventurous nature of this campaign, we had not predicted the traction that the campaign achieved. It seemed bold decisions had led to big tracking shifts. The impact on both the Chunky and the Kit Kat master brand was phenomenal for such a small spend.

Sales Results A key metric to determine the effectiveness of the campaign is to look at sales of Kit Kat Cookies and Cream against our core target audience, relative to brand and category. A strong uplift would be a very strong indicator of the success of our campaign due to the highly targeted nature of the media. Relative to these measures, we had successfully persuaded males 12–19 to buy Cookies and Cream more than their typical purchasing behaviour would dictate. Indeed, achieving an index of over 115 would have proved successful persuasion against the core target – Chunga achieved a buyer penetration index of 197.