AdMiration feature: KitKat’s “Break Better”

For this week’s AdMiration feature, we researched KitKat’s “Break Better”

ad. The ad is part of their campaign that reinvigorates their classic “Have a break” tagline to address how important it is to take breaks in our day to day. 

Read on to get our 3-2-1 snapshot of the ad (3 facts, 2 learnings and 1 reflection) and learn how their ad was received based on our data.

The ad opens to a young man sitting at his desk in a bustling office. As someone drops a pile of notes onto his desk, he begins receiving multiple messages on his computer, which causes him to sigh and say, “I’m just going for a break.”

When he stands up, all his post-it notes, pens, laptop and even whiteboard start trailing behind him and eventually sticking to him as “I Want to Break Free” by Queen starts to play. As he tries to maneuver his way out of the office, he tells coworkers who try to speak with him that he’s “just going for a break” while office items continue to literally pile on top of him.      

By the time he makes it outside, the pile is so high that he struggles to keep walking. But as soon as he reaches for a KitKat and breaks off one of the bars, the music stops and all of the items fall off. He lets out a relieved sigh as he plops down on a bench to enjoy his KitKat bar. The music picks back up again when a construction worker, covered in assorted traffic cones, tools and pipes sits down next to him — who he then offers part of his KitKat bar to.  

The ad closes with the classic red KitKat background color and the phrase, “Have a break, have a KitKat.”

3 facts

• The ad scores in the top 5% of UK ads in potential to drive both short-term sales and brand equity.

• It effectively uses humor as well as a distinctive, relatable and emotionally engaging story to implicitly convey the benefits of KitKat enabling people to “break free.” This creates positive benefits for KitKat for BOTH short-term consideration and long-term brand appeal — not an easy feat to accomplish.

• While the ad drives laughter, like, and love, it’s the KitKat product specifically that is associated with all of the moments of love as the solution to a relatable problem. This makes KitKat the hero in the ad and a positive choice for people.

2 learnings

• Focusing on the emotional benefit of a brand, in this case the need to take a true break, can be much more powerful in making people positively predisposed to your brand than any functional message. But you have to ensure the emotional benefit is clearly demonstrated.

• Showing, not telling, is very compelling when done well. Visualizing the problem and the solution is a really powerful and engaging way to draw people into a story and ensure your key take outs are understood. 

1 reflection

• Are you taking the time to step back and think about a campaign idea that can offer you freshness and longevity, rather than a one off hit? A great campaign idea, like 'Have a break, Have a KitKat' can last for decades when grounded in a real insight, with the expression of the insight refreshed for the modern day and executed in engaging, humorous and different emotive ways over time.

KitKat's “Break Better” campaign, created by VML, builds upon their classic “Have a Break” tagline, addressing the demanding world we live in and the struggle we all face to take a break and fully switch off. 

Chris O’Donnell, Global Lead of KitKat at Nestlé, shares, “KitKat has been the brand that owns breaks for over 80 years, but we needed to find a way to resonate with the pressures on young people’s lives today. We want to not just champion the importance of taking breaks, but to help the world break better for years to come.” 

This new campaign spans across TV, out of home, social and more, and will be adapted for countries around the world. 

Tom Drew, Executive Creative Director at VML UK, also shares, “A decent break always comes from an ability to fully disconnect. It’s been so much fun to bring this idea to life across such a broad range of channels and in such a playful way. It’s safe to say, the whole team is now enjoying a well earned, proper break.” 

The ad spot intends to break category norms with a humorous take that addresses what we all deserve: a good break.  

KitKat’s “Break Better” has “breaking” results — it scores in the top 5% of UK ads in potential to drive both short-term sales (Sales Impact: 97) as well as brand equity and long-term sales (Brand Impact: 96)!

Overall, “Break Free” cleverly demonstrates the refreshed insight of how people need a true break. It creates a powerful visual image of the problem (stress) and how KitKat resolves this problem in a very positive way. This is done with a funny, entertaining and relatable story which drives a strong emotional connection to viewers and the brand.

One of the key factors that drives success for “Break Better” is that it creates a strong emotional connection with viewers, achieving an overall emotional reaction of 62% (vs.  the UK average of 44%). More specifically, the story evokes strong  “love” as well as “likes” and “laughter” given the humorous storyline. 

People laugh as the young man tries to break free from the office and all of the office “clutter” of post-it notes, whiteboards, laptops etc, keep attaching to him and weighing him down. They particularly “love” when his KitKat break releases all of the office clutter from his body and enables him to “break free.” 

Importantly, the story ends with a couple of peaks to keep people engaged — the second person arriving with all his stress and load attached to him (which cues laughter) and the well loved and known KitKat slogan reinforcing the brand benefit of  “Have a break, Have a KitKat.”

The lovable and humorous story is highly enjoyable (enjoyment mean of 4.1 vs 3.6 norm) and relevant (mean score of 3.7 vs. norm of 3.3). People particularly like and can relate to the scenario of trying to break free portrayed, the humorous style, the clever music “It’s time to break free” and the resolution of taking a break with KitKat. 

Part of the reason the ad is so enjoyable and relevant is that Nestle have refreshed their insight on taking a break now reflecting it’s not just a break people need, it’s a PROPER break. Viewers truly relate to this — 7% spontaneously like how relatable it is, 16% like the overall scenario and 20% found it funny/entertaining. 

Some selected verbatims from likes help illustrate the power of the idea and story: 

• "I like the images and the video. It really painted a very powerful visual image of stress and how food (even KitKat) relieves it. It also showed sometimes only 1 thing is needed to deal with your most pressing problems."

• "The way it showed how stressful the worker was but then when having a KitKat, his stress disappeared.”

• "I liked how relatable it was and it was creative. It’s showing the stress of working in an engaging and creative way. It was entertaining."

• "The humour aspect and storytelling that made you want to watch the advert to the end."

• "The aspect that brings relief for the guy the moment he lays his hand on KitKat."

The strong role music plays in the story also shines through with high musical appeal  (4.3 mean score vs 3.7 norm) and 12% of people spontaneously mentioning it as a like. This showcases how putting music choice at the heart of creative development alongside the important executional elements can ensure it is used to best effect to support or even tell part of the story of the ad. A few selected “like” verbatims help demonstrate the power of the music in this spot: 

• "The music, the video concept and how it was put together."

• "I liked the music. It went well with the type of day the young man had at the office. It definitely went with the advert."

• "I liked it when his magnet work desk followed him and then the KitKat snapped and he got free like the queen song."

Another key success factor for “Break Free” is that the brand plays a pivotal role in resolving people’s stress of needing a quality break. The brand is well-remembered, with 72% of viewers correctly playing back KitKat as the brand advertised after watching it among a reel of ads. 

Although the brand wasn’t revealed until after halfway through the ad, one-fourth of viewers talk about the long running campaign idea and slogan, “Have a break, Have a KitKat” as the brand cue. This is a great testament to sticking with a strong campaign idea for many years — as typically viewers focus more on the brand name or logo as a brand cue. 

In addition to emotionally engaging viewers, “Break Free” does a great job of implicitly conveying the message that “KitKat helps you take a break from your day.” This is very relatable to viewers and drives a strong response. It’s an exceptional example of how you can use a compelling story to show people the brand benefit vs. telling them about it explicitly. 

Most notably, this is an excellent example of fresh consistency for a campaign. More than 30 years after the campaign began, it continues to work hard for KitKat by tapping into the same insights in a fresh way. The insight of taking a break has been refreshed to tap into the difficulty of truly taking a break in today’s environment. They’ve conveyed this in a newly humorous way, demonstrating the emotional benefit of taking a break…and KitKat plays the hero in the ad, enabling people to truly take a break. This is reinforced with the long-standing slogan, “Take a break, Have a KitKat.”

Despite running for over 30 years, the ad is still seen as distinctive showing they've hit the perfect balance of freshness and consistency.  

This ad from KitKat shows us the power of a consistent message over the years!

What did you think? Let us know by interacting with our coverage of the ad on LinkedIn.

To make sure you never miss one of our AdMiration analyses, subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter.