Brand Extension

What we can learn from Kit Kat

By Tadson Bussey

Even if chocolate is not on your grocery list for this week, you might check out the candy aisle at your local store. If carbs, cavities, or post-COVID chocolate fatigue have kept you away, you might be pleasantly surprised by some flavors now available. Yes, Hershey’s Kisses now come in caramel, cherry, strawberry crème, and mint. But the classic Kit Kat bar has them beat.

My Kit Kat fascination began innocently: I noticed the familiar Kit Kat bar had a different wrapper in Canada. The font was stylized, and there was an added circle. Over the next few years, I began to notice the circle appearing on the US version, and, later, the new logo was incorporated on the bars near my home.

At about the same time, I began seeing Kit Kat bars in different flavors. Intrigued, I began to pick them up here and there. A mint version caught my eye (green wrapper). Then came orange. I couldn’t stop—peanut butter, dark chocolate, extra creamy (sent by a friend who called one night from Target. “They come in light brown extra creamy now. You want ’em?” Of course I did).

What fascinated me almost more than the flavors, and the green tea day was a low point, was that these completely different snacks could all live within the same brand look and feel. I can’t think of two snacks more different than passionfruit filling covered with chocolate and lemon cheesecake layered with white chocolate. Yet instead of creating a new logo, a new look, and a new package design, The Hershey Company has extended the Kit Kat brand to include them all. In this way they capitalize on their already well-known brand and introduce new products at the same time. And they are not the only ones doing it.

The lesson I take from my continuing Kit Kat adventure is that a single brand and logo, with some creative color and formatting choices, can be stretched to cover a very diverse set of entities. If a blueberry and wafer confection can live in the same brand as miniature caramel chocolate bites, why do so many of our clients desire a complete logo treatment and brand identity for each new event, department, and area of study? By capitalizing on the strength of the brand that brings the audience in, in most cases the institution’s brand, we gain quality by association and save ourselves from diluting that brand.

You might try bringing a few Kit Kats to your next client meeting where the topic is “We need a logo.” If all else fails, you will still have some chocolate (or cherry, or vanilla) to munch on.