KitKat

The Objective

Utilizing the TikTok community to launch new Halloween treats

With the perfect balance of chocolate and wafer, there's a reason KitKat is enjoyed in more than 80 countries and is the world’s favourite break. Nestlé’s KitKat, a global icon for chocolate bars, was seeking to promote their latest Scary Friends chocolate and Haunted House building kits to new audiences during the most fa-boo-lous time of the year. The brand looked to TikTok to drive awareness and increase ad recall, focusing on encouraging users to “have a break” and buy their new Halloween treats as they prepared to greet trick-or-treaters.

The Solution

Treating users to an upper-funnel awareness campaign

It's the most boo-tiful time of the year: Halloween season! Looking to launch KitKat’s Scary Friends and Haunted House products, Nestlé worked with TikTok's Client Solutions team to implement ad solutions that leveraged Auction In-Feed Ads to drive cost-efficient video views, as well as awareness and consideration of KitKat’s latest products on the platform. Implementing a Reach and Frequency buying method, the brand aimed to entice adults 25-54 who were interested in purchasing candy for their home trick-or-treating with their freakishly delicious new products, strategically targeting both English and French Canadians.

For the creative, Nestlé leveraged product specific brand-led assets that introduced the two new delicious treats. The videos featured eerie-sistible graphics that felt natural to the platform, whilst highlighting the limited time opportunity to buy the products and reinforcing KitKat’s “Have a break, have a KitKat” iconic slogan.

Finally, Nestlé ran a brand lift study with questions that were very specific to the new products to track Ad Recall, Awareness, Favourability and Intent.

The Results

A scary-good awareness boost

KitKat’s new Scary Friends and Haunted House delights found their home on TikTok by treating the community to a fun campaign that focused on enticing lovers of all things fang-tastic during the Halloween season. Nestlé saw firsthand the power of leveraging TikTok to successfully reach mass audiences and surpass their upper-funnel objectives. Their six-week campaign had immense impact on overall awareness of the new products, generating over 11.3 million impressions and reaching over 1.1 million unique users with a frequency of 10. Plus, Nestlé’s brand-led videos did just the trick in keeping users intrigued throughout the scariest time of the year, delivering an engagement rate and clickthrough rate above benchmarks, of 46.3% and 16.7% respectively.

Moreover, this campaign demonstrated that compelling brand-led assets can be just as effective in engaging users on the platform as native or creator content. KitKat saw a wickedly impressive +28.4% lift in Ad Recall and +20.7% increase in Awareness, both significantly exceeding Canadian benchmarks. And if that isn’t enough, the brand also achieved a notable uplift in Favourability (+11.3%) and Purchase Intent (+2.4%). Simply fa-boo-lous!