Numerous brands have been drawing off interest in chatbots over the past year and a half, but in January, KitKat Canada turned the trend on its head thanks to a lucky … break.

The good fortune came in the form of a study from Google’s AI research lab, DeepMind, published just as KitKat was looking to increase relevance by injecting itself into more usage occasions. One of the study’s findings was that large language models (LLMs) return outputs more accurately if the user prefaces their prompt by telling the model to take a break. For instance, LLMs that were instructed by the researchers to “Take a deep breath and work on this [math] problem step by step” yielded their highest accuracy scores.

Seeing the obvious connection to its years-old “Have a Break” tagline, KitKat seized the opportunity, developing with Toronto-based agency Courage an ad that cleverly ties its brand to AI interest. The 60-second spot centers around the study’s finding by encouraging chatbot users to insert, “Have a break, and then …” before inputting their request. 

KitKat and Courage strengthened the effort by doing some of their own research on whether the short primer actually made a difference. Their findings, which corroborated those of the DeepMind study, were included in the spot, illustrating that virtually any query they input—from researching literature to requesting tips on building credit—can actually improve from the model taking a breather.

The ad aired throughout Canada but received global attention on social media thanks to KitKat sharing it via its wider-reaching accounts. From AI experts on LinkedIn to influencers on TikTok, people took notice, praising the effort for its creativity and seamless connection to a cultural phenomenon.