Key points for understanding KitKat’s success with co-creation:

• Like many brands, KitKat ultimately realized that they can’t dictate brand meaning. Instead, it must be co-created

• Years after KitKat launched in Japan, sales were sluggish. An unexpected insight from market research revealed that their brand was being interpreted and valued very differently.

• Despite being a global brand, their parent company shifted KitKat’s positioning in the Japanese market, embracing this new, unexpected brand meaning. As a result, KitKat continues to be a national treat in Japan

When is the optimal time to eat a KitKat bar? If you instantly thought, while “taking a break”, you’re no doubt already familiar with a key element of their brand strategy: KitKat is the clear, unambiguous, “take a break” candy bar. And their catchy jingle will never let you forget it. 

KitKat is a global brand, and maintains this positioning in each country that it operates in. Each market except for one: Japan. Here, they are as far from the “take a break” brand as a candy company can get. As a result, they’re one of the most successful candy brands in the country, and have a very special role within Japanese culture. 

Why is KitKat so different in Japan? Because their parent company, Nestle, engaged in co-creation with that market. How did KitKat manage this, and what can modern brands learn from them? Let’s dive in

What KitKat tells us about Marketing Psychology

Today, KitKat bar can be found all over the world, but it has a special place in Japan. For years, the chocolate brand struggled to gain adoption. Except that, in one specific region, “Kyushu”, sales spiked each year around January. When they looked into it, they discovered that the word “KitKat” within the Kyushu dialect meant “you’ll surely win”. 

They discovered that university students were giving these chocolate treats to their fellow classmates around exam time as a good luck charm. KitKat’s tagline, “Take a break with KitKat” wasn’t hitting. They weren’t “taking a break”; they were being gifted the motivation to succeed! This was a key insight. 

The first lesson you can learn from KitKat is that marketers can't always perfectly anticipate how a product or brand will be interpreted. The goal is to foster brand meaning, and to be valued by the market, but here’s the thing: it can’t be dictated. 

This is a key aspect of marketing psychology. There is no such thing as objective value; it’s the market that decides what’s valuable. And so to unlock value, brands need to be open-minded about their brand’s meaning within that market. 

This is exactly what KitKat leaned into. 

How KitKat leaned into Co-Creation in Japan

Engaging in this deeper market research was the first step, but now it was up to KitKat to decide how it should act on these insights. Nestle, which owns KitKat, was very reluctant to jettison the original tagline since it's a key component of the global brand. Understandably, they wanted to protect the consistency of the brand, which was beloved around the world.

And so instead of jettisoning it completely, they de-emphasized it with additional copy in line with the idea of it being a good luck charm. They added a simple line on their packaging which loosely translates to “Cherry blossoms will definitely bloom”. And in doing so, they embraced a metaphor of their consumers achieving their dreams. Consistent with this positioning and message, KitKat also began adorning their advertisements with images of cherry blossoms, which in Japan symbolize success. 

Philip Sugai, Professor of Marketing at Doshisha University and author of Building Value through Marketing has extensively analyzed KitKat’s efforts in Japan. “Nestlé was able to create such deep and resonating meaning because they aligned the KitKat brand and its ‘surely win’ messaging inside of a deeply emotional space: parents and friends wanting to quietly give their loving support and their children or friends who were struggling with a major life challenge.” 

By remaining open, and by engaging in co-creation with their market, Nestlé completely redefined what KitKat means in Japan. As Sugai explains, “Nestlé figured out how to make a chocolate bar a platform for communicating love and support, on terms defined by the local context.” 

Using this organic assimilation to reposition their brand paved the way for KitKat to become a National Treat in Japan. Since 2010, roughly half of all Japanese university students reported utilizing KitKat in exactly this way. 

Co-Creation Lessons on KitKat’s Success in Japan

Not long ago, brand managers thought of themselves as the guardians of brand image: it was their task to sculpt the image in the market, and then to protect this image from appropriation and insult. But in today’s fragmented media landscape, such tight control is all but impossible. 

More and more, however, brands are learning that they dictate exactly how their brands are perceived, or how products are used and enjoyed. Increasingly, consumers aren’t just fans of brands; they have the power to shape brands, as well as their products. This new dynamic presents both challenges and opportunities. 

The last lesson you can learn is that, especially if you’re launching a new product, or you’re launching an existing product in a new market, it may be wise to leave its interpretation slightly ambiguous. Recall that meaning can’t be dictated unilaterally - it must be co-created.  

It can be extremely difficult to foresee exactly how a product will best match an existing market ahead of time. Instead of dictating this - as in, “eat a KitKat bar when you need to take a break”, you can take the opportunity to see just how it will be enjoyed and integrated. Be open-minded with your branding psychology.

Oftentimes, if provided the opportunity and space, your market will tell you the best way to reach them. When consumers inevitably adopt products into their lives in their own unique ways, you as the brand need to be there to listen, extrapolate, and scale. 

Photo by Behnam Norouzi on Unsplash