Episode 99 - KitKat Giving Gamers a Break Ad Reviewed By Reckitt
Advertisers Watching Ads checks out KitKat’s “Give Gamers a Break” ad this week, looking into how stressed out gamers can get when playing FIFA 22. The brand infiltrates the game in this clip chosen by Contagious and produced by Wunderman Thompson.
This stunt played on FUT Champions weekend on 22-24 April in Malaysia put smiles on a lot of faces, but did it achieve anything for the brand’s marketing strategy? It’s based on some great insight and data driven marketing, but why did our guests Ayeza Sumsam Mohiuddin (Category Lead at Reckitt), Cicero Hennemann (Head of Digital Hub - Western Europe at Reckitt) and Pollyanna Ward (Social Media Account Director) only rate it a 3 out of 5?
Watch the full ad and see what you think in the latest episode!
Automated Transcript
Episode 99 - KitKat Giving Gamers a Break Ad Reviewed By Reckitt
Amy Wright 00:00
Welcome to this week's Advertisers Watching Ads. This is the show where people from across the marketing industry discuss case studies, ads, and things that are going on in the industry. We've got really interesting case study this week, which is really exciting to run through. But first, I want to obviously kick off with thanks to our partners Contagious, who have selected the case study that we'll be talking about this week. Before further ado, I'm going to introduce our guests this week.
Ayeza Sumsam Mohiuddin 00:31
Hello, my name is Ayeza Sumsam, and I work for Reckitt Pakistan.
Cicero Hennemann 00:35
Hi, I'm Cicero. I'm Head of the Digital Hub for Western Europe based out of the UK, also working for Reckitt.
Pollyanna Ward 00:41
And hi everyone, I'm Pollyanna Ward, and I'm currently an Account Director.
Amy Wright 00:47
So this week's case study, we all know that playing FIFA can be really stressful and 70% of players see their heart rate soar when the opposition scores and research shows that the game can make you angry. So Kit Kat has pulled a stunt to give gamers a break in this new ad. What I'm going to do is on the count of three, I'm going to ask you to hold up your hand with a score for the ad overall. So one, two, three... Oh, okay. Thought you're going to go a little bit higher than that, but threes across the board for everyone. Okay, so what were your initial impressions?
Ayeza Sumsam Mohiuddin 03:06
Pure genius, because this was such a real actionable insight that you know, I guess, when you play FIFA, like the research shows blood pressure goes up, your heart rate kinda goes up. So we do realize that it causes a lot of stress, a lot of stress that "Oh, you know what? We have to have that winning streak in us." But it's just that nobody really realized that, "Oh, you know what? This can be like perfect moment of marketing." Your stress is high or you need a break, you need to eat something to calm your nerves down and Kit Kat is like the perfect solution to the problem that you have. So for me, I think this was like a wonderful, wonderful and best class study of how we can use, like, real insights. So for me, I think this was an absolute blast to watch.
Pollyanna Ward 03:43
I did kind of feel like the insight was a bit more Snickers if I had to put a sort of contrarian hat on. But I would say that Kit Kat, they've had that brand platform since the fifties. You know, "Have a break, have a Kit Kat." I think on a surface level, absolutely brilliant. Love the insight and the actual execution. But yeah, it was just fascinating to dig a little bit deeper and realize that a lot of work went into understanding gamers. I think it's just kind of true to if you're going to go on a platform, you know, play it yourself, understand it yourself, because it took them two years to get that off the ground.
Cicero Hennemann 04:14
It is in the realm of data-driven marketing where you know that there is an actual situation that you can put your brand in a meaningful, real, right? Rather than a planted thing. It's really good to have a break and it is a real stressful situation, and I think it also taps into places where people might not have felt included before, right? And gaming has had such a prominent spot now for advertisers and also so many people playing in and coming together with pop culture. And it's so nice to see brands go into, into that space.
Amy Wright 04:50
How do you keep pushing it and keep reinventing it for the modern age?
Pollyanna Ward 04:53
I think it's the really interesting brief, and I also almost see is hopefully an inspiration to marketers. This is essentially, to me anyway, it's a glorified sampling brief. We need to sample, I don't know, a thousand Kit Kats to a target audience. We, I don't know, it's still COVID, so we can't really be going around giving stuff out hand to mouth, literally in train stations or whatever. So what do we do? We do it digitally. But I think this is very much a really exciting sampling brief that probably has the same level of guardrails for a brand. But you need, that's why you need to rely on your agencies, right? To have those people in place who get gaming world, who are native gamers. You know, it's really difficult when you're in-house to perhaps have someone that has that plethora of skills and that's where it seems like they've got a really great agency that have been able to really get under the skin and probably were able to react very quickly to anything that kicked off.
Cicero Hennemann 05:49
I do know of other campaigns with FIFA as well. I don't know if you all have heard about the Burger King one, which is a very different way to execute. Basically, they sponsored a very low league team and then their logos went into every single FIFA match, and they also gave away freebies. I think that Burger King case on FIFA where they actually hacked the whole thing. There was no hack here, it was kind of like... Right, just giving stuff away online, right? If you want to go into that. I don't think it got into people who love in it and it didn't do something that any other brand could not replicate as well.
Ayeza Sumsam Mohiuddin 06:28
This campaign had a lot of potential to really become like a massive campaign. But sadly, then it was a concern for marketing spend or maybe it was a concern for return on investment, but it didn't pan out as popular as we thought it would when we saw it in the first instance.
Pollyanna Ward 06:43
Maybe next year we'll see them do something big. Maybe this was just a test. So, yeah, I think from that sort of lovely award season case study video, a really interesting way of doing sampling in a very native way. But yeah... Did anyone see it? Probably not. No.
Amy Wright 06:58
So what do you think it tells us about how brands need to be approaching their planning now and almost invent these new spaces and new ways to show up in the world?
Cicero Hennemann 07:06
It's just the appetite for risk. Going into that and doing that, you could have a backlash. You give people the voice just to speak back, right? Because you're sending them an active message. So I think that appetite and the ability to respond to that might also be something that, you know, the brands need to get on with it and just generally know that, yeah, going online might have a great reward, but it might also have a huge backlash from, from users.
Ayeza Sumsam Mohiuddin 07:33
Yes. You know, there's like a massive risk that we would be facing backlash. So I think as marketers, and this is what we have started practicing in the past five, six years as well that, you know, wherever we go and we launch a digital campaign and we just make sure that we have like a backup plan or we have like a relationship management plan in place in case, you know, everything kind of backfires. So when that happens in terms of salvaging the campaign, or God forbid, if it happens in terms of salvaging the campaign, you have an action plan to mitigate that. Also, I think another thing which marketers or maybe I had that misconception in my early years of my career that you know what? To have a great campaign, you need to have like massive amounts of investment or marketing spend. That might not be the case anymore. You just have to think creatively. You just have to think outside the box. You have to think innovatively. You know, this is like a perfect moment for us to practice that.
Pollyanna Ward 08:20
This was like quite a good way to test and to take that risk because it could have backfired. You know, there was some commentary saying, interestingly it was some Western commentators who were sort of saying, "Oh, this is really intrusive and interruptive. No one wants their game to be interrupted by a brand." But interestingly, when you look at more of the Asian consumer, they're actually a lot more brand happy, I suppose, than the Western market. From a UK perspective, like, "Oh, what is it... Like, go away brand." Whatever that meme is. But in Asian cultures, it's a lot more accepting, especially where there's a payoff. They're a lot closer to brands, so I think it makes sense for them to do... I don't know whether you could replicate that everywhere. I think once you've done it once, it's kind of how do you go bigger and go better? But I think more broadly, it just speaks to that sort of nichification that we're sort of seeing of passion points and subcultures grouping together in small spaces.
Amy Wright 09:11
I still like the ambition of it. I think it's fun. Could have very easily put in some terrible advertising in the game or something like that. So it's an interesting ad and something different. So thank you to everyone for watching at this week's AWA. Thank you to all our fabulous guests and Contagious magazine. And also to Kit Kat for such a great case study for us to discuss. And we will see you next week.
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