The Art of Consistency: How KitKat Breaks from the Industry’s Obsession with Reinvention

​When Wael Jabi took the reins at KitKat four years ago, he arrived with a dangerous assumption: his work was already done.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘This is going to be an easy job’,” admits Wael, global head of marketing and communications for KitKat at Nestlé. In his eyes, the heavy lifting had been finished decades ago by Rowntree’s marketing legend George Harris. “Everything from the brand name, logo, tagline, the positioning, the product, everything, cooked to perfection,” Wael says. “I thought to myself, ‘There's nothing I need to fix.’ The brand has been handed down to me on a silver platter”.

If the brand was perfect, Wael wondered, “What is the role of creative agencies?”.

It was a question that made for a tense introduction with João Caputi, global strategy director at VML, the agency that has stewarded the brand through decades. “You can imagine my first conversation with Wael was awkward too,” João laughs. “Because he didn't think we needed an agency”.

For João, the job wasn't about fixing a broken brand, but rather “bursting this royal bubble a little bit”. Speaking after a showcase of the brand’s consistency in front of the audience at Most Contagious 2025, he argues that while the pure strategy for KitKat shouldn't be complicated, the execution is deceptively difficult. “In reality, the complicated part is keeping it simple,” says João. “That's the work that we needed to do together”.

In an industry obsessed with the new, Wael and João have committed to the art of consistency. They are fighting against what Wael calls a specific ‘industry symptom’: “This reinvention syndrome... Everything is bad and long live the new thing”.

The Snap Is the Strategy

This commitment to consistency required Wael to shift his mindset from ‘royalty’ to historian. Upon digging into the archives, he discovered that the secret to the brand’s longevity wasn't just in the slogan, but in the physical engineering of the chocolate bar itself.

He unearthed 1970s and ‘80s advertising guidelines that explicitly mandated the ‘ritual’ of consumption must be the star of the show. “It talked about the importance of the ritual, that you need to tear and you need to break and you need to make sure that that moment is highlighted in the ad,” Wael recalls.

This discovery highlighted a critical truth: the product’s unique format – the fingers, the foil, the snap – is not incidental. It is the marketing. “We always talk about the ritual,” Wael says, but seeing it codified in decades-old documents made him realise, “Oh my god, I need to respect that history, cherish that history”.

For João, this physical ‘break’ is the only reason the metaphorical ‘Have a Break’ slogan works. “You can't just disassociate the both,” João explains. The brand’s entire emotional territory is built on the foundation of the “engaging product experience”.

“The engaging product experience really was the reason to believe that KitKat was able to build that break territory,” João notes. In other words, without the physical snap of the wafer, the concept of a mental break would lose its credibility.

Digging for Gold in the Archives

To understand how to keep this product-centric story fresh, the team looked backward. João had a ‘eureka’ moment when hunting for the origins of the word ‘break’ in the brand's history.

“I tried to find the first time the word ‘break’ was in a piece of advertising,” João says. “Even before ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ was a line,hey had a piece of print that had ‘break o'clock’, but it was really leaning in on the break of the product.”

This archaeological dig confirmed that the ‘break’ wasn't originally a philosophical concept, but a literal description of the product's structural failure when snapped. Wael and João found themselves marvelling at how previous generations had leveraged this simple product truth to address complex cultural moments.

They cite the ‘Russian Linesman’ ad – a reimagining of a controversial World Cup offside call caused by a linesman stopping to eat a KitKat – and a Cold War-era spot showing a break bringing superpowers together. “It's just a brilliant piece of advertising,” Wael says. “You look back and you think, ‘God actually that's exactly what people are preaching today’.”

The Common Enemy and the ‘Mounting’ Problem

While the physical ‘break’ of the product is universal, the reason for taking one changes depending on where you are on the map. To keep the brand relevant globally, Wael and João identified a ‘common enemy’ shared by consumers everywhere: the “interruptions” of an always-on culture.

This insight underpinned last year’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning ‘Phone Break’ campaign from VML Czechia. By visually swapping smartphones for KitKat bars in everyday scenes, the work playfully chided our collective compulsion to scroll rather than take a genuine pause – proving that the 70-year-old slogan is perhaps more necessary now than ever.

However, fighting that enemy requires intense cultural sensitivity. As João explains, “There was a consistent enemy, but how you portray that execution was just being in the culture to understand how that insight plays out.”

He points to a recent campaign in India featuring a man on a bench being physically overwhelmed by a crowd. “In India, that representation of the amount of people mounting on that guy was seen by the team as the best way to bring the same insight to life,” João says.

But when that same creative concept was tested in Southeast Asia, the reaction was starkly different. “In ASEAN they were like, ‘Hmm, this kind of overcrowding of people feels a little bit insensitive’,” João recalls.

For Wael, navigating these nuances is critical. “For some [a break] is sacred, for some it's a show of dedication that you haven't taken a break,” he says. The solution, he insists, lies in “trusting the team on the ground to know better”.

The Agency as Guardian

This delicate balance of global consistency and local relevance is held together by a relationship that has outlasted most corporate marriages. The partnership has survived the acquisition of Rowntree's by Nestlé, and on the agency side, the evolution from J. Walter Thompson to Wunderman Thompson to VML.

“Generations of brand builders managed to agree that ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ is a good thing,” Wael jokes.

But it is more than just agreement; it is a system of checks and balances. Wael admits that the agency often protects the brand from the client’s impulse to tinker. “I've had probably five marketing leads on KitKat whilst I've been on the job,” João says. “And you get exactly that. Like they want to add their imprint on it... and then you need to push back a little bit”.

Wael doesn’t mind the pushback. In fact, he relies on it. “They're the ones that keep us honest,” Wael says.

Keep It Light

Beyond the consistency of the slogan and the ritual, there is the consistency of the feeling. For João, the magic of KitKat lies in its refusal to take itself too seriously.

“You can talk about Cold War negotiations, but you do it in a tongue-in-cheek way,” João says. “With a smile. With kind of wit”. This lightness of touch is a deliberate choice. Wael is the first to admit that, in the grand scheme of things, they are selling snacks, not saving the world. “It's just chocolate,” Wael says. 

That humility gives the brand license to be fun, but João insists that the fun is not frivolous. “A lot of brands use humour as an engagement tactic, but for us, we always wanted to think of it as a strategic part of the brand.”

The logic is simple: if the product is a break, the marketing must be one, too. “If you are the break brand, you really want to kind of let people kind of just put their guard down and just relax,” João says. The ultimate creative challenge, he adds, is figuring out: “How can we make our advertisement as engaging and enjoyable as a break of the product as well”.

Ultimately, Wael views their mission not just as selling chocolate, but as shifting a mindset. “We're in the business of behaviour change,” he says. And in a marketing landscape defined by constant flux, he hopes KitKat stands as a lesson in the power of holding your ground.

“KitKat is a counter-example that's helpful,” Wael concludes. “Stay the same and evolve, but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”​