“A KIT KAT hologram for a musical break”

In Japan, KIT KAT has launched a communication campaign aimed at Japanese students. To give them a break while they are revising for their exams, they are sent a kit comprising a transparent pyramid that when placed over a smartphone screen makes a hologram suddenly appear for a spectacular visual effect.

Technically speaking, this is about designing interactive hologram projectors from a 360° photo or 3D animation. To create the optical illusion, this requires a screen fitted with a system that only lets light through in one direction. All this is combined with a set of mirrors that indeed gives the impression of an object floating in the air.

Despite this underlying technical sophistication, the experience offered by KIT KAT naturally fits into everyday life. In revision periods, grandparents often give their grandchildren moral support by sending them letters of encouragement. Here there is no abrupt technological change for a generation that quite simply writes its words of encouragement with a real pencil on KIT KAT’s “packaging” envelope. This is then sent by local post to the stressed-out student. A threefold effect for recipients: their family’s moral support in a conventional letter, a chocolate treat for a well-earned break, and a surprise: listing to boys band music in a hologram version. KIT KAT thus reaches out to all generations!

KIT KAT’s originality lies both in the innovative holographic process and in the distribution of kits. The kits are naturally distributed in stores like 7-elevens but above all in local post offices, on the same principle as prepaid envelopes. The brand turns a “food item” into an intergenerational communication vector. It also underscores family memories at exam time, an important period for students! What better way to inspire logistics operators to enrich in an original manner their campaigns aimed at customers. This holographic process was also tested in Best Buy stores in the United States in July 2015 to showcase certain products. A way of catching consumer attention again by creating the unexpected.
Video
In 2015, life in stores was marked by numerous experiments in augmented or virtual reality, with varying degrees of success. But also by facial recognition technologies, more particularly in fitting rooms to recognize customers and remind them of their previous purchases (Kenneth Cole), or more intrusively by detecting the customers’ brain waves and offer them personalized colours and styles of clothes (Uniqlo). An emotional store is taking shape, where all the senses now contribute to giving consumers an augmented experience, blurring all the more the boundaries between virtual and real. The 21st century store, “6D” cinema?

KIT MAIL HOLOGRAM from J. Walter Thompson Japan on Vimeo.