And in 2018, Starbucks shut more than 8,000 stores across the US for a day following a racial profiling incident. It was a visible pause and a reset. Most importantly, it was not subtle but unmistakable.<\/p>\n
Different moments. Different tones. But the same underlying instinct\u2014meet the moment, don\u2019t run from it.<\/p>\n
Not an Ad. Still Advertising<\/p>\n
And this is exactly how marketing and advertising experts are reading it. \u201cWhen I first saw it (the official\u00a0KitKat\u00a0statement), I thought\u2014this is advertising,” reckons Harish Bijoor, who runs an eponymous brand consulting firm. It almost feels like the start of a new genre: apology advertising that doesn\u2019t apologise, but plays the moment.<\/p>\n
Except, apparently, this isn\u2019t an ad. “But come on\u2014the red, the\u00a0KitKat\u00a0colours\u2014you can see they\u2019re milking the moment. And doing it smartly,” he says. When something gets stolen, it signals value. And here,\u00a0KitKat\u00a0has flipped it. They may have lost a shipment, but they\u2019ve stolen consumer affection. “It makes you smile. And that smile is serious brand currency,\u201d says the advertising and marketing guru.<\/p>\n
And that, in many ways, is the whole point.<\/p>\n
KitKat\u00a0chose its lane. It didn\u2019t try to out-joke the moment. It didn\u2019t overcompensate with action. It simply stayed in character. The same brand that tells you how to break a chocolate bar\u2014and then invites you to ignore it\u2014handled a real-world break the same way. Calm. Light. In control.<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019re eating a\u00a0KitKat\u00a0or handling a crisis, the principle holds: Respect the form. But never lose the feel.<\/p>\n
Break it clean or don\u2019t, just make sure that when the moment comes, you still taste like yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And in 2018, Starbucks shut more than 8,000 stores across the US for a day following a racial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[24415,24423,24413,884,24420,24412,24416,23627,24414,199,24064,24417,24421,24422,24419,24418],"class_list":{"0":"post-42130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nestle","8":"tag-apology-advertising","9":"tag-brand-authenticity","10":"tag-brand-crisis","11":"tag-brand-storytelling","12":"tag-brand-tone","13":"tag-crisis-communication","14":"tag-have-a-break","15":"tag-kitkat-heist","16":"tag-moment-marketing","17":"tag-nestle","18":"tag-nestle-kitkat","19":"tag-peloton-response","20":"tag-reputation-management","21":"tag-social-media-buzz","22":"tag-starbucks-incident","23":"tag-tylenol-crisis"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116322828519780882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}