Kit Kat Chunky Champion cracks recipe for successful integrated social campaign

Posted by: mariamz on: February 24, 2012

In: Uncategorized
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Today Kit Kat UK ends its grand social campaign to choose who will be the next ‘Chunky Champion’ (voting ends midnight tonight).

This truly integrated communications piece, where the brand released four limited edition chocolate bars of different flavours and asked the public to vote on which will remain in the nation’s sweet shops, demonstrates how a social media campaign can work across multiple platforms in harmony.

It also speaks to the promise of social media enabling even massive corporations to bring people into their product decision-making processes.

Facebook voting

The Kit Kat UK Facebook page has enabled voters to select from four choices for the Kit Kat chunky bar. With well-positioned use of a ‘like-gate’ (you can move around the page but not vote until you ‘like’) page visitors are enticed in to make their selection.

After the necessary ‘like’ you are presented with a clear and compelling voting page…

But the mechanics are a little clunky after this point – after getting to the voting app you need to click again to confirm your vote or enter your details for the competition. This seems a little unnecessary – personally I would have designed it for votes be submitted first and offer the competition option to users afterwards, but it’s a fairly minor detail.

Of more annoyance is the way Facebook’s news privacy controls work -after hitting vote you get its weird app halfway house… the social media equivalent of the Beetlejuice waiting room.

And on the app screen while it is good that you can restrict who sees this activity to certain lists of friends, you cannot select more than one list (maybe they need a visit from a friendly G+ engineer on this one).

Word of Mouth

From personal experience the Word of Mouth on this has been truly buzzing… I’ve heard several complaints that you ‘can’t get hold of a peanut one anywhere’. This meme also spills onto KitKat’s Facebook wall – where it might be considered whether this ‘shortage’ is actually rather convenient PR for the campaign…

Interestingly I have mostly seen women on social media talking about wanting the white chocolate version (currently in second place) – whereas the campaign is aimed at young men – and the peanut butter version has been the clear winner throughout.

If more women are saying they want white (we know they generally communicate more on social networks like Facebook than men do) – but peanut butter is still winning – perhaps this means Kit Kat have indeed hit a sweet spot by appealing to rafts of men who will hit the vote button but not necessarily engage in conversation about it. (The campaign was designed to reach a male audience).

TV and radio

Radio ads have sent people to the Facebook page to vote – specifying that participants must be over 18. Even more compelling has been the strategic tie up with ITV – which has enabled ads showing live voting updates to be screened on prime TV ad slots.

YouTube

For YouTube KitKat recruited four well known actors from the cutting edge of comedy to support the campaign with webisodes where each campaigns for their flavour:

KIT KAT Chunky Orange supported by Miles Jupp, known for his role in In The Thick Of It, and his appearances on panel shows Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You, offers the addition of a zingy orange flavour
KIT KAT Chunky White Choc supported by Tony Gardner, known for his roles in The Thick Of It and Lead Balloon, sees the famous Kit Kat wafer encased in luxurious white chocolate
KIT KAT Chunky Double Choc, supported by Miranda Hennessy, known for her role in Channel 4’s Phone Shop, adds an extra layer of milk chocolate to make for an indulgent chocolatey taste
KIT KAT Chunky Peanut Butter supported by Jason Lewis, star of his own MTV show The Jason Lewis Experience, sees the return of a popular past variant with its own distinct flavour combination and new recipe

The Results

Anecdote aside there are early signs that the campaign has reaped dividends on Facebook. In addition to obvious engagement on the UK Facebook wall they have seen massive growth in likes since the campaign began – they have been one of the top growing pages in the last month on Facebook: