KP Snacks Brings KPow! to UK Screens With Animated Nuts Campaign
KPow! is a 2021 animated film campaign created by St Luke's for KP Snacks, launched in the United Kingdom on 21 April 2021, designed to reposition KP Nuts as a contemporary, flavour-forward snack brand through two 30-second animated films depicting exaggerated everyday scenarios.
The campaign marks a significant moment in the KP Snacks brand story. KPow! returned KP Nuts to British television after a three-year absence, according to Clapboard's editorial research, representing a deliberate recommitment to broadcast-scale awareness in a category increasingly contested by challenger brands and private-label alternatives. The strategic objective, as documented by Creative Salon, was to make KP a more contemporary and relevant nut brand and to broaden its appeal among consumers who might otherwise overlook the category entirely.
In the United Kingdom, the campaign ran across television, video-on-demand platforms including ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, out-of-home, digital out-of-home, and social media, with media planning and buying handled by Starcom. The campaign was scheduled to run through December 2021, giving it a sustained eight-month presence across the UK media landscape. Two distinct creative executions anchored the campaign: a film titled Traffic, which promoted the Salt and Vinegar variety of KP Nuts, and a film titled Office, which promoted the Spicy Chilli variety. Both executions were produced by Blinkink and directed by Stevie Gee and Essy May, employing a combination of 2D and 3D animation to create a vivid, kinetic visual language befitting the KPow! name. The campaign carried a reported investment of £2.5 million, as cited by Clapboard, signalling a serious commercial commitment to reversing the brand's receding presence in the snacks aisle.
KP Snacks identified a gap between how the nuts category was being communicated and how younger working adults actually experienced snacking. The core insight driving KPow! was that nuts, long positioned around health or sharing occasions, had an untapped identity as an immediate, intense flavour hit — a quick, satisfying jolt rather than a considered dietary choice. Creative Salon reported that the strategic objective was explicitly to increase brand appeal and contemporise KP Nuts, moving the brand away from passive category conventions toward something more charged and culturally present.
The choice of animated film as the campaign's primary format was strategically deliberate. Animation allowed St Luke's to exaggerate the physical sensation of flavour in ways live action cannot, amplifying the KPow! moment into something both comedic and visceral. The two executions — Traffic and Office — were set in recognisable, mundane environments, grounding the exaggeration in the lived experience of UK consumers. This creative strategy positioned snacking not as a passive habit but as a micro-event of genuine pleasure within an otherwise ordinary day.
In the United Kingdom, the competitive environment for bagged snacks is formidable. PepsiCo's Walkers brand commands significant scale in the savoury snacks segment, while Kellogg's Pringles, Mondelez International, Mars, and Tyrrells each represent meaningful competition across adjacent formats, according to Clapboard's competitive mapping. Against this landscape, KP Snacks needed a campaign that carved distinctive territory. KP's core brand was valued at £80.4 million in 2021, growing 22.8% in value that year, according to data cited by Creative Salon, and KP Snacks' wider portfolio grew 3.6% in value over the same period, ahead of the overall category per the same source. KPow! was conceived to accelerate that momentum by giving KP Nuts a distinctive creative identity that could operate at scale across broadcast and digital channels simultaneously.
Blinkink directed KPow! through a combination of 2D and 3D animation. The production company brought on directors Stevie Gee and Essy May to lead the two 30-second films, a creative pairing whose background in character-driven animation suited the campaign's demand for expressive, exaggerated protagonists reacting to sudden, overwhelming flavour. The animation technique merged flat graphic aesthetics with dimensionality, giving the films a visual energy consistent with the KPow! name without tipping into the visual noise that can obscure a product message.
The creative team at St Luke's assembled a dense internal roster to realise the campaign. Executive creative director Richard Denney oversaw the work, with art director Laura Stevens and copywriter Claire Wombwell responsible for the core creative concept, as documented by Creative Salon. Designers Rob Hare and Javier Leal-Olivas shaped the visual language of the new KPow! branding, while chief strategy officer Dan Hulse and strategy director Lydia Jones built the consumer insight framework that underpinned both executions. Agency producer Georgie Moran and assistant producer Joel Campbell managed production through Blinkink.
The two films deployed their settings — a traffic jam for the Salt and Vinegar execution and an open-plan office for the Spicy Chilli execution — as recognisable containers for comedic escalation. Both environments are familiar to the UK working adult audience the campaign sought to reach, and both exploit the contrast between the deadening ordinariness of waiting or working and the sudden, cartoon-physics eruption triggered by a KP Nut. This structural joke, repeated across both films, functioned as a mnemonic: the KPow! moment became inseparable from the product. The new KPow! branding was applied across the full KP range, giving the campaign a reach beyond the two specific nut varieties featured in the films and reinforcing the identity at point of sale as well as in broadcast contexts.
KP Snacks' KPow! campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 46 out of 100. No independently verified campaign-level performance data — such as brand tracking uplifts, recall scores, or attributable sales increases specific to the KPow! executions — is publicly available for this campaign beyond the brand-level trading figures documented in trade sources.
What the available data does indicate is directionally positive at the brand level. KP's core brand grew 22.8% in value in 2021, reaching £80.4 million, according to Creative Salon, a figure that covers the period in which KPow! was active. KP Snacks' wider portfolio grew 3.6% in value over the same year, ahead of the overall snacks category, per the same source. KP's Popchips core range achieved £35.2 million in retail sales value, growing 12.5%, as reported by Creative Salon, suggesting broader portfolio health during the campaign window.
Structurally, KPow! exhibits several attributes associated with effective brand-building advertising in the United Kingdom. The return to television after a three-year absence restored the brand to a high-reach environment at a moment when VOD viewing had significantly expanded the addressable audience for broadcast-adjacent creative. The choice of animation created a distinctive and ownable visual register in a category largely reliant on product-centric or lifestyle photography. The eight-month campaign duration, combined with a consistent £2.5 million media investment as cited by Clapboard, provided sufficient frequency to embed the new KPow! identity. The campaign contained two executions rather than one, allowing for variety within a consistent creative platform and reducing the risk of wear-out across an extended run.
KPow! is a 2021 animated advertising campaign created by St Luke's for KP Snacks in the United Kingdom. Launched on 21 April 2021, it featured two 30-second films — Traffic and Office — promoting KP Nuts varieties through exaggerated flavour-hit scenarios, running across TV, VOD, out-of-home, and social media channels through December 2021.
St Luke's created the KPow! campaign for KP Snacks. The London-based agency handled creative strategy and production, with executive creative director Richard Denney leading the work. Media planning and buying was handled by Starcom. The animated films were produced by Blinkink, directed by Stevie Gee and Essy May, according to Creative Salon.
The KPow! films used a combination of 2D and 3D animation. Blinkink's directors Stevie Gee and Essy May led production, creating a kinetic visual style that exaggerated the physical sensation of eating KP Nuts. The technique allowed the creative team to amplify flavour impact in ways live-action film could not achieve.
KP Snacks invested £2.5 million in the KPow! campaign, according to Clapboard. The budget supported an eight-month media run from April through December 2021 across television, video-on-demand platforms including ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, out-of-home, digital out-of-home, and social media channels in the United Kingdom.
KPow! returned KP Nuts to UK television after a three-year absence, according to Clapboard. The strategic rationale, documented by Creative Salon, was to make KP a more contemporary and relevant nut brand. Television and VOD provided the scale necessary to reestablish the brand's presence against competitors including Walkers and Pringles.
KPow! promoted two varieties of KP Nuts. The Traffic film featured the Salt and Vinegar variety, while the Office film featured the Spicy Chilli variety, as documented by Creative Salon. The new KPow! branding introduced through the campaign was subsequently applied across the wider KP Snacks range beyond the two featured nut products.
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