Author: Michael Litman

How about this for a joined up campaign.

Originally called Key Lime Pie, employees at Google soon realised that a) people don’t really know what Key Lime Pie tastes like and b) it didn’t resonate with a global, mass audience. So the jury was out, what to call the new 4.4 Android OS. Then they struck gold.

Let’s call it Android KitKat, and we’ll partner with KitKat themselves to make it happen. (I’m evidently massively oversimplifying this.)

No money is changing hands, the ideas was to do something “fun and unexpected”. But this isn’t something that Google just came up with overnight and went ahead. They’ve been talking with Nestle about the idea since November 2012, with some 11 months of planning having gone in to it. It only got finalised in February 2013 when Nestle executive vice president of marketing Patrice Bula, decided within an hour to go ahead.

It used to be Apple that would announce a new product without anyone previously knowing about it, shrouded under secrecy and mystery. Now even they get leaked sometimes months in advance. So this partnership will have come as a surprise to even most Googlers i’d imagine.

Here’s where you can start to understand the scale of the partnership: 50 million KitKat bars in 19 countries will have Android branding and consumers will have the opportunity to win a Nexus 7 tablet and Google Play gift cards. That’s incredible scale, Google have just tapped in to creating awareness about 1) Android 2) Nexus 7 and 3) Google Play.

Production of the wrappers started 2 months ago – it’s just amazing that it hasn’t come out until now.

Nestle is also producing a small run of 500 limited edition KitKats in the shape of the Android logo and have been sending them out to influencers. Here’s The Verge proudly showing theirs off. Clever influencer tactic too, getting the big hitters creating even more interest and demand.

All of this talk is making me hungry for a Kit Kat now…