McVities iKitten

McVities launched a masterbrand campaign entitled Sweeet™️. The aim was to align all the various biscuit brands in their portfolio into a cohesive campaign. The campaign featured various baby animals popping out of biscuit packets to personify the warm feeling of eating their biscuits. We were asked to extend this campaign from just TV, OOH, into digital. What resulted was iKitten, an augmented reality app that let users place virtual kittens from the campaign into the world to experience their own Sweeet™️ moment.

Inspiration

These are the trends and opportunities that inspired our decision to create a virtual pet for the modern time using technology that was available today.

Cat Videos

Another inspiration for the app came from cats. Cats dressed up make up a big part of the internet. Countless hours of videos of cats doing the craziest things exist and we love it! After researching the phenomena we realised the kittens were the best animal to turn into a virtual pet.

Tamagotchi

The primary inspiration for the app came from the childhood craze of Tamagotchi. Anyone who grew up in the 90's knows about the tamagotchi mania. The question we asked ourselves was what does the modern day equivalent of the tamagotchi look like.

Augmented Reality

Looking at the current digital technologies available at the time, AR was the most compelling. It was the hottest trend that didnt require extra complexity on the users part. VR required extra gear and took you into the experience instead of bringing the experience to life.

iKitten

With all of this in mind, we created iKitten the virtual pet that lives in the real world. You can dress up using different outfits, we got from scouring 12 hours of cute cat videos on Youtube. The kittens movements and reactions were also inspired by famous cat videos bringing familiarity and virality to the app

Students-kittens-and-Axel-F-McVities-has

Results

59k

downloads within 2 weeks of launch

2.2m interactions with the app at time of tracking. (2016)

2.2m

4/5

4/5 star reviews from fans who enjoyed interacting with the brand