KitKat reprises half-finished ad in new DOOH activity

Nestlé brand KitKat is resurrecting an award-winning decade-old marketing strategy in a new digital out of home campaign designed to demonstrate the enduring power of a consistent brand message.

JWT first devised the “Have a Break, Have a KitKat” tagline in 1957, and in 2014 the agency launched a campaign which gave the strapline an ironic twist by showing a half-finished poster displaying only part of the line – “Have A Br Have A” – that implied the person putting the billboard up had quit work early to enjoy a KitKat. The work landed a D&AD pencil.

Wunderman Thompson UK – which was formed by the merger of JWT and Wunderman in 2018 – is now going one step further, pushing the boundaries of how many letters are needed on a poster to understand a brand message.

Going live this week in London, the digital poster shows only the five letters of “Have a” in white text on a distinctive red background, with the space bar blinking where you would expect to see the word “Break”.

In a survey run by Wunderman Thompson UK, well over half of people not only identified the brand, but also understood the brand message, a move which it is claimed demonstrates the power of the Have a Break, Have a KitKat tagline.

Wunderman Thompson UK executive creative director Tom Drew said: “Ten years from the first half-finished billboard, the KitKat slogan is stronger than ever. Even though we’re depicting the copywriter having a break, we certainly won’t be taking one ourselves – even after 66 years, there are still so many stories we can tell for our brilliant KitKat clients.”

KitKat and Biscuits senior brand manager Stephanie Scales added: “KitKat has famously encouraged people to have a break for decades, and this poster took that one step further, encouraging people to have a break without explicitly saying it. All it takes is five letters to communicate one legendary message.”