Kit Kat nestles up with lovebirds

Nestle India returns with a new campaign this year, with the animated 'Squirrel' story taken forward with the tale of a pair of lovebirds.

After dabbling with animation for the first time in India last year, Nestle has returned with a new campaign for its chocolate-coated wafer confection Kit Kat. The new campaign takes the story forward from the earlier 'Squirrel tale' to one with two lovebirds.

Nestle, through the campaign, urges youngsters once again, to take a break from their busy and on-the-go lifestyles, to get surprised by some delightful moments in life.

Conceptualised by JWT, the television commercial titled 'Lovebirds' shows one of the students bored during a class on primitive animals. He takes out a packet of Kit Kat from his pocket and bites into it. To the boy's surprise, he sees a pair of lovebirds perched on the window sill, frolick and sing 'Aao na gale lagao na'. The boy, who is amazed, nudges the girl sitting next to him, but she ignores. The TVC ends with the bird which says 'Kit Kat break banta hai'.

Speaking about the idea, B Kannan, general manager, chocolate and confectionery, Nestle India, says, "The current TVC continues the conversation we started with the 'Squirrel' TVC, which was a great success. The need was to build further on the brand promise. The idea was to highlight the rejuvenating role of Kit Kat in a situation with which the youth relate easily -- the classroom. In fact, it hints at how the break is satisfying for our young lad. He returns to the lesson with a smile on his face."

Sonia Bhatnagar, vice-president and senior creative director, JWT, explains the brief for the campaign. She says, "The brief for this campaign was the same as that for the 'Squirrel' ad -- to show how good things can happen when you take a Kit Kat break. We wanted to use a situation which youngsters are familiar with , hence the classroom seemed a good choice. The strict professor with the retro hairdo was a bit of a stereotype. While we did not intentionally want to use animation again, the idea of lovebirds in a classroom was something we all loved the most."

Rekindling old memories?

For advertising professionals, the new television commercial, at first glance, reminds them about the old campaign, and hence, lacks freshness.

Shiveshwar Raj Singh, group creative director, Draftfcb Ulka, says, "We live in the age of sequels. Don 2, Dhoom3, Krissh 2, and here we have, Kit Kat, too. While the first commercial had the wonderful randomness of two squirrels going at it to a campy Bollywood number, this one suffers from a carefully thought-out structured approach that makes it a little more than a cookie cutter version of the first."

Singh opines that the TVC is an apt example of the client who desires an encore of the success they tasted with the first, so agencies end up repeating everything, and thus, reduce it to a formula.

Vikram Dhaliwal, planning head, Rediffusion-Y&R, says, "Chocolate is a mood enhancer, a more complicated way of saying that it makes you feel good. The campaign extends the chocolate idea further with a visual demonstration of that feeling through the device of animation. And, it manages to do it interestingly enough."

Dhaliwal, however, feels that what the film and the brand offer to the youth is far from clear. "If the objective was to depict and even enhance the perpetual distraction and disengagement with their physical environment that defines their lived experience today, then that has been accomplished. The question that remains then is, is that enough?"

Click here to read the storyboard.