Gamifying crime

We’re continuing with our theme of Cannes Lions winners this week with a campaign built on a mystery.

I remember being amused back in March of this year when I heard about the most Willy Wonka of crimes. Someone had stolen 12 tons of KitKat bars from a production site in Europe. Surprisingly, the brand also seemed to approach the incident with a touch of humor. What they did next turned what could have been a PR nightmare into an award-winning marketing campaign.

It is true that some person or persons unknown stole over 400,000 KitKat bars as they were in transit between Italy and Poland. The brand even had to confirm in a statement that this was a legitimate crime and not an April Fools’ joke. 

KitKat decided to leverage the heist as a marketing opportunity. It launched its Stolen KitKat Tracker (now deactivated), a tool where consumers could scan their purchased KitKat to see if it was a member of the stolen batch. The tool gave consumers all over the world the chance to play Nancy Drew, and around 2.2 million people engaged. 

In addition to producing a credible lead in the investigation, the campaign was a marketing success story. KitKat noted $224 million of earned media in 10 days and reached over 8 million people across 6,500+ articles. KitKat took home a Grand Prix prize this year at the Cannes Lions International Festival for Creativity for the campaign.

KitKat made the absolute best of a bad situation. It invited its consumers to participate in the incident and live out their Sherlock Holmes dreams. This type of consumer engagement was a key effectiveness trend at Cannes, proving the power of community-building. 

Whatever was lost in that truck of KitKats has surely been worth the trouble. We can’t wait for the Netflix documentary about this one.