KitKat has been around since 1957, but it is still engineering new ways to reach young consumers. 

The snack brand this week debuted “Blink Break,” a web-based game that invites users to engage in a staring contest with various animals, from sleepy cats to wide-eyed lemurs. Although the creatures aren’t actually participating—their appearances are simply footage from video clips—the game succeeds in offering genuine competition through artificial intelligence (AI) technology that is able to analyze the performance of the player in real time. As soon as the player blinks, the game ends and reports their total score.  

The tech works like this: After requesting access to the player’s mobile or computer camera, it uses machine learning (ML) to capture their face, recognize its structure and unique landmarks and identify movement, such as blinking. The underlying platform is called Face Mesh, a solution from the open-source ML framework, MediaPipe. 

For KitKat, the solution seemed rightly suited for Gen Z audiences, who not only enjoy digital games more than any other generation but are also interested in new forms of technology. Augmented reality has found its core audience in this demographic with apps like Snapchat and the burgeoning metaverse—which will blend virtual worlds with gaming—is expected to cater to these consumers as well. 

“[This] campaign shows a whole generation of digital natives the benefits of taking a break in one of the most relevant contexts for them,” said Wael Jabi, global strategic marketing and communications lead at KitKat, in a press statement.

Taking a break has long been the core message of KitKat’s marketing, but keeping that message fresh is imperative to onboard the next generation of consumers. “Blink Break” attempts to do this by appealing to those audiences with what they want—games—and with a novel, tech-savvy feature that could strengthen engagement with digital natives. KitKat is also mainly promoting the campaign on its social channels, where it is most likely to find these consumers.

The new effort is not KitKat’s first foray into gaming. Last month, it infiltrated FIFA with 100 specialty accounts to target Malaysian players of the game’s “Weekend League” challenge. Wunderman Thompson Amsterdam created the campaign; the agency’s Seattle and U.K. offices created “Blink Break.”

Beyond games, AI has increasingly found its way into marketing through strategy applications. For the summer Olympics last year, NBCUniversal launched a tool that claimed to help marketers improve the efficacy of their messaging during the games. A new agency called Supernatural also emerged last year with a focus on using AI not only after campaigns have launched, but also in the process of creating them.