KitKat uses AI testing to highlight the importance of a proper break

KitKat, the chocolate brand known for championing break times, is highlighting the importance of truly unplugging on your annual holiday, with a little help from AI.

In the pantheon of corporate slogans, KitKat’s immortal line: ‘have a break, have a KitKat’ surely ranks alongside Mars’ ‘a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’ and Apple’s ‘think different’.

In 2024, however, brand ethos is of equal importance to sticky messaging, and Nestle and agency VML’s latest campaign for KitKat, is an attempt to marry the brand’s indelible association with ‘breaks’ with a worthy message around wellbeing.

The “Have a break…” slogan dates back to the mid 1950s, but it’s seemingly as relevant as ever. Qualitative research revealed that people feel they have less control over their schedule, with increasing time pressures, multitasking, or simply not able to switch off their minds.

The benefits of taking a break are diminishing, it seems, as people become increasingly distracted or interrupted.

AI-ttention to detail

Interestingly, AI testing was carried out by tech company Kantar to make the ad more effective. Its AI-powered ad testing solution, LINK AI, was put to work to discover how different soundtracks would perform across the world.

Testing the creative with various soundtracks against its global LINK database brought a clear winner: Queen’s timeless “I Want To Break Free”. The LINK+ solution was also used to combine survey data, facial coding, and the global reach of its normative database was used to pretest animatics worldwide. This allowed Kantar to understand the elements of the creative that worked across the markets, as well as identify cues to optimise and localise the creative where needed.

The result of this journey was reportedly a KitKat copy that performed in the top 10% in terms of Distinctiveness and Long Term Impact scores.

Our take

The question marks around AI in advertising often revolve around its use in the creative process. It’s interesting, then, that its use in audience testing is being explored.

By staying true to its brand slogan, KitKat has pulled off a great ad, with a relatable wellbeing angle. The visuals, which depict work-related items such as sticky notes and whiteboards physically attached to a stressed worker, hit home as a metaphor for how we let ourselves get overly burdened, even during break times.

It’s a winner then, we reckon. Although, apparently, you needn’t take our word for it: our AI overlords have deemed it so.