Nestlé International Travel Retail (NITR) has hailed a major KitKat branding initiative to engage with consumers before entering duty free stores in Dubai, Madrid and Hainan Island (Haikou and Sanya airports), which resulted in high engagement levels.
In total 22 million online impressions were delivered across the target locations via high-traffic platforms in December 2021 and January 2022.
“We saw strong clickthrough rates across all formats – meeting or exceeding our target benchmarks for the campaign. The focus on digital engagement was paramount, so we were pleased to see a +1,000% increase in website sessions for December versus the year average,” said Tamara Spada, Marketing Manager at Nestlé ITR.
Based on M1nd-set research, which highlights that 55% of decisions to purchase a category are made before travellers enter the store, Nestlé’s ‘Digitally Connected Shopper’ campaign series focused on extending the shopper journey, creating greater brand awareness, and deepening engagement with travellers as they pass through the airport.
For its launch in Dubai, Madrid and Hainan Island, the KitKat campaign featured across giant digital advertising hoardings with the aim to increase communications with target travellers.
Slogans such as ‘Cele’break New Year – Discover KitKat at Dubai Airport’ and ‘Boarding – your ticket to an exclusive KitKat experience’ were designed to target travellers at a specific destination in their travel journey, pre-trip, in-trip and during travel.
The Dubai campaign was a four-way partnership between Dubai Airports, Dubai Duty Free, JCDecaux and Nestlé, that helped to maximise the campaign’s impact to travellers, leveraging KitKat brand awareness throughout the passenger shopping journey at the airport.
The communication programme embraced 177 digital screens strategically located before departures and at points of sale, to influence passengers and trigger purchases in Concourse A (Terminal 3) and Concourse D (Terminal 1).
As Dubai Airport was opened at 100% of its capacity (in December), Nestlé aimed to leverage the increased passenger numbers at this location through 360-degree communication. This included digital and in-store/in-airport communication to drive sales and brand awareness during the day of the trip.
The ‘Cele’break New Year’ campaign for Dubai featured a fun infographic depicting KitKat branding and a passenger’s packing journey – from suitcase angst to traveller joy.
For Hainan, the infographic featured KitKat branding and a character travelling from a winter climate into a tropical one, showcasing the idea of travelling south in China.
Nestlé ITR General Manager Stewart Dryburgh said: “This campaign was designed to extend KitKat’s digital brand awareness among returning global travellers. We wanted to celebrate the whole passenger journey at the airport with seasonal branded communications to drive traffic into our retail locations. Our goal was to increase and drive sufficient brand awareness and consideration, on top of our direct customer communication, especially in the case of an impulse category, such as confectionery.”
Whole trip targeting
The KitKat campaign represents a new stage in digital marketing, said Nestlé. The company is focused on boosting opportunities to target travellers to a specific destination in their travel journey, and across three key stages of trip duration:
Pre-trip: Driving awareness in a fun and engaged way on brand availability at the passenger’s visited airport.
Day of the trip: Driving awareness, consideration and purchase of KitKat Senses; a way to remind passengers of KitKat exclusive product availability at their visited airport.
During vacation: Reminding travellers of KitKat exclusive product availability at their visited airport once back from vacation with a focused communication on sharing and gifting.
The digital campaign for KitKat also ran across other worldwide locations; see above for a short video from Muscat Airport
While the Covid-19 crisis meant comparable sales levels were more challenging to measure, the brand owner claimed “a notable and beneficial increase” in brand sales in all three locations.
