Background – creative platform:

Research told us the UK loves biscuits because they remind of home comforts; being cared for and comforted by loved ones. So we created communications designed to evoke this same feeling.

McVitie’s creative idea:

To bring to life this warm, comforting feeling we used warm, comforting animals as an analogy - creating an adorable feeling of “cute-pain” for the nation. We called it “Sweeet™”.

iKitten Creative idea:

The McVitie’s “Sweeet™” campaign has been on TV since 2013. But we wanted people to feel the “cute-pain” for longer than a 30 second TV ad. So we developed the McVitie’s iKitten; an app that recognises the logo on the packet of Chocolate Digestives, and a kitten magically appears on your phone. It puts the brand and the feeling right into hands by giving everyone a personal McVitie’s kitten they can play with, personalise, and share.

Implementation:

To ensure we out-cuted ourselves, we found the cutest videos of kittens on the internet to help inspire, then recreated them frame by frame in furry 3D to create moments of cuteness that our audience could engage with in an augmented reality app. We also included personalisation features – hats, toys, and gestures - so our audience could play with the kitten and make it their own.

Placement:

iKitten is easy to use and simple to play with in any environment; searching the app store or Google Play for iKitten will lead you to the download page. The app could recognise the logo on the packet of chocolate digestives, and we also had a marker that could be printed out or distributed in stores.

Scale:

It was supported through PR influencers; online Pre-rolls; Social channels, and Shopper activity.

Timeline: iKitten was created from beginning to end in two months.

Released alongside a major TV campaign, we saw:

- over 50,000 downloads in the first week

- exceeded download target to date by 423%

- 55% of users in our target audience of 18-44 year olds

- average dwell times of approx 5 minutes a session

- #7 in the iTunes entertainment chart at launch

- #6 in Android top new apps

- 4.1M+ interactions with the kitten to date

- 148K+ pictures taken to date, ready to share

- 158,324 mice chased to date