This is the difference between knowing your customer, and understanding them
Great story about how Nestle positioned Kit-Kat as being more than just a candy bar in Japan, by understanding the culture of the Japanese student, and their parents.
The Japanese have a saying “Kitto-katsu” which loosely translates into “I hope you succeed!”. According to Alpha-Male, Nestle executed a 4-year rebranding effort in Japan to play off of the similarities between Kit-Kat’s name, and the saying kitto-katsu, to position the candy-bar as a ‘lucky charm’:
Year 1: Hotels in Tokyo began giving complementary KitKat bars to students who came to the city by the thousands to take the fiercely competitive university entrance exams. The KitKat was presented as a little “lucky charm”. Students were surprised and touched. They didn’t know the candy giveaway was sponsored by the manufacturer.Year 2: The advertising agency behind this stealth campaign wangled some news stories (not ads) about the hotels’ candy giveaway. The reason for the stealth: Japanese young people are suspicious and scornful of advertising.
Year 3: Some ads began to appear. They didn’t look like ads. They were cute little stories about teachers, mothers, students and the lucky charm. The ads were fiction, but real Japanese moms began packing KitKats for their kids when they left home to take the exams.
Year 4: Real people began to appear in the ads that didn’t look like ads. No product was ever shown. Just a subtle little KitKat logo.
As you can see in the comments, some people were upset by Nestle’s tactics here, claiming they were ‘manufacturing’ news, and deceiving their customers. While I can see some people wrinkling their noses at the fact that Nestle didn’t disclose that they were behind the initial giveaway in hotels, I really don’t see it as that big of a deal, after all if these kids can buy a candy-bar and feel better about their chances when taking an important exam, I say it’s a win-win deal for everyone.
Of course, maybe this comment says it better:
I’m going to boycott my mom.She used to tell me this story when I was a kid. When I fell down and scraped my knee or bumped an elbow, she would kiss it and said that would make it better.
What a liar.
That’s what’s wrong with mom’s today. They think kids want to feel better when what they really need is medication.
So is this smart marketing, or deceptive marketing?
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Repetition, especially to excess, is hard on...
i think it’s a cute marketing idea.
p.s. why is the candy green on the package? is it green tea flavored?
I’m all for it.
Advertising traditionally isn’t anywhere near as effective as it used to be, so fresh ideas are necessary.
I like this one. It’s guerilla in nature, and let’s not lose sight of the fact that it did take four years for the idea to become viral. Smart marketing, I say.
Agreed Jordan, looks like Nestle had a great marketing plan in place and executed it correctly.
You see this kind of marketing being done in the news everyday. Some company does some promotional event and the local evening news, desperate for local stories, eats it up, gives them 1:20 of free ad time in a traditionally non-ad venue, and there ya go!
The only difference between this and payola is that the companies don’t even have to pay for it!
I’ve only known one newsman in my life to stand up to this. I was working the cameras one night and the anchor was eyeballing a story about some new store opening in town. He tore up the story and told the producer “I’m not reading this. It’s a cheap commercial, and it’s unethical.” Unfortunately, the producer was just barely out of college, had gotten the press release, and had run with the story like a rabid dog. She, however, could not trump the anchor, who was well established.