Now that the Cannes dust has properly settled, the work worth studying is the work that still says something useful. And KitKat Heist topped it in the PR category. From first look, it felt like the oldest trick in the PR book. A van ‘breaks down’, brand plays along, public gets involved. But the fact that it really happened and KitKat used the public scepticism as fuel made it more effective.
A truck carrying about half a mill KitKats disappears. Legal worries about liability. Comms worries about reputation. Operations worry about supply. Someone asks whether the police have been informed.
Somewhere behind a desk, someone has a lightbulb moment. They turn a stolen shipment into a Grand Prix-winning PR campaign.
When PR was introduced as a category at Cannes in 2009, work was judged on earned reach. Nowadays, we need a lot more than that to hold the judges’ attention. The best work moves culture, travels across borders, changes behaviour. KitKat did all three.
When dissecting awarded work, usually, we find similar ingredients that are common in most great campaigns. Or as every brief ever written says, a red thread.
For us at Splendid, we’ve built a framework to understand why some campaigns land better than others.
We call it COUNT.
Cultural Relevance. Originality. Unified Thinking. Narrative Led. Tangible Impact.
Running KitKat Heist through COUNT shows exactly why it won.
Cultural Relevance: The brilliance was that it didn’t force its way onto culture. Cue Steve Buscemi meme (how do you do fellow kids). It understood a culture already sceptical of brand stunts, where people love to play detective. KitKat found a role in that behaviour by letting the scepticism become part of the story.
Originality: Innovation doesn’t always need to be a vibe-coded agentic AI solution. Originality often comes from reframing instead of inventing. It can be just looking at an age-old supply chain problem through an original lens. The genius was recognising there was a mystery waiting to be solved.
Unified Thinking: In true Grand Prix fashion, KitKat displayed top of the table performance in Unified Thinking. Every piece of the campaign moved the story forward: PR created the mystery, the Tracker unlocked participation (UGC gold), social sustained momentum. Everything worked together to keep people asking the same question: is this actually happening?
Narrative Led: It’s hard to oversell how important storytelling is in our industry. As they say, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to tell a story, and he’ll make a career in marketing, culminating in LinkedIn Think Pieces. This is where KitKat really earned the GP with a story telling master class. A theft, a villain, a mystery, a nationwide manhunt and millions of people moonlighting as detectives. We do love a ‘whodunnit’ challenge after all.
Tangible Impact: This is where we start quoting 10-digit numbers and lose the room. Most campaigns move the needle without moving anything that matters. KitKat moved both. 800M earned reach. 44% share of voice at Easter (the only metric that actually moves chocolate sales). But the real tangible impact? It turned scepticism into fame and participation.
Great ideas don’t walk into the room looking like Grand Prix ideas. It’s usually quite the opposite. They need to be cultivated and nourished with the ingredients that turn them into a conversation that counts.
If you’d like to understand more about COUNT framework, let’s have a conversation.
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