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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

This honestly makes me wonder: what is the point of web sites for stuff like KitKat? Clearly, they can replace the entire thing for the purposes of a joke so it can't be that high up there.

Who visits those sites? What do they do on them? The Nestle/Hersheys site, sure. Standard corporate stuff. But a site specifically for KitKat?

EDIT: there seems to be some confusion in the replies. I am not talking about this joke web site that was put up today. I am talking about the normal kitkat.com that has been around forever.

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Marketing is a tricky beast. Sometimes "viral" things like these will drive more traffic (and thus, awareness of your product) than money can buy.

As for who visits these sites? Almost no one. Until they pull a PR stunt like the one that just happened.

Many/Most brands in this don't-need-their-own-site category have PR stunts continually in the works with their homepage just pointing to their latest microsite.

One point of sites dedicated to a product like Kit Kat, is that it protects their brand by directing people to _their_ page when people type Kit Kat in Google or another search engine. It would also capture other searches related to the product. You will be surprised at how many people use the Google search box as their default navigation tool - even when they know the name of the site. In fact, I have seen people type Google.com in the search box rather than directly into the browser's navigation box!

Kids exploring about things they like; beating domain squatters; point of contact for journalists (even doing soft feelgood articles); marketing campaigns driven from the site; merely establishing an online presence is cheap, once you have IT staff anyway...

Nutritional value, who owns the product, retailers (e.g. if you're outside of the US often products are harder to come by), etc. Standard stuff.

Presumably the same people who like KitKat on Facebook. Utterly pointless, but people do it.

I agree that it's pointless, but liking a product on Facebook are signaling to their friends that they like KitKat. I think social proof plays a role here: "will I be less cool if I don't show people how I like this thing some of my friends like too?"

A brand website doesn't quite have the same appeal of social proof. It takes a greater interest in a brand to visit its website than it takes to open a logo in a friend's FB profile.

Okay, makes sense, then correct my statement to: "The same people who participate on the KitKat Facebook fanpage." Now that's really pointless, unless you want to complain ;)

Seriously, I think the websites of candy or Coca Cola and similar consumer products are probably visited by people who want to participate in some sort of lottery or want to get some coupons. Maybe these people just check their favorite brands' websites once in a while for new coupons/prizes.

Smart marketing agencies can take a dead-end brand that's perceived as low price or low quality, then socially market it to young hipsters and get them (and their friends) to like/follow it as a way to signal to their friends that they don't care about marketing or signalling and that they "get it", and thus in the process drive a renaissance for aforementioned product due to its newly found trendy fanbase.

Who visits those sites?

We just did.

> What do they do on them?

I don't know, but now I want chocolate. Too bad for them, I already have a candy bar in the pantry.

>Clearly, they can replace the entire thing for the purposes of a joke so it can't be that high up there.

I bet they sell a few Kit Kat in the next few days after this little joke.

EDIT: Noticed they've coordinated a marketing campaign with http://www.android.com/kitkat/

Towards the end of the page, it looks like they are doing this promo because you can win an Android device by buying kitkat, so this is hardly a joke, but a well thought through ad campaign.

What would you think if they didn't have the site?

People will visit the web page because it's funny. It features a lot of pictures of Kit Kat. Geeks love junk food and might serve themselves a treat, a why not, a Kit Kat just after watching this.

This process is called advertisement. Guess what? It works.

No, I mean the normal page. Not this joke one. kitkat.com has existed for a long time, and before today was just filled with normal promotional stuff.

Many reasons. Kitkat could put information about their product, like nutritional content, ingredients, etc. They could also provide information about the history of the brand, the different varieties, specialty varieties, limited time offers from the past and present. Perhaps they could also provided things, like videos and images of past advertisements, especially if they were particularly funny or interesting. Additionally it's a great way for customer outreach. They could inform them about some new limited time variant offering, organize contests or challenges, and so on. For example a lot of these products also offer a kind of rewards system. After you eat your candy you can note down the little code on the side, and redeem it for free products, or to enter a contest. What better place to provide this than their own website? This would included stunts like what they have pulled on their website today. And of course you have the whole trademark protection and brand identity things too.

The point is quite simple. Public visibility is valuable regardless of relevance.

This is the same across the board; if you have a sellable good and are serious about it, it should exist in as many accessible ways as possible. Marketing 101.

Granted, this contributes to the noise that makes traditional advertising much more difficult to be successful at, but if everyone is yelling and its your job to be heard, you need to yell too, or find a new place to talk quietly.

The cost for making a decent website are presumably negligible in the advertising budget of a global brand such as Kit-Kat. Not doing a site would require very high certainty that it's completely useless.

When I was a kid, Kellogg's had a bunch of flash games on sites for their main cereal brands.

Guess who had their mother buying cereal at the supermarket every month?

Children learning to use the internet, perhaps. Though such a site wouldn't be very kid-safe, in terms of nutritional health.

To me at least having a product site makes more sense than the facebook/twitter feeds for them.

Well, Hershey's doesn't seem to have individual domains for their candies. They own the domains, but they redirect to hersheys.com/product. That makes a bit more sense to me.

Nutritional info.

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