Hershey’s
Visual Systems
Analytics
Environment
Balanced choices
The Hershey Company is the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America, distributing chocolate and confectionary products for over a century. Today, The Hershey Company manages a variety of brands including Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, York Peppermint Pattie, Heath Bar, Twizzlers and Jolly Rancher.
Having identified an emerging shift in the population age correlating with higher incidence of diabetes and the increasingly health-conscious mindset of the “Millenials,” Hershey’s focused on its “better for you” category. Lippincott was engaged to develop aisle architecture and product positioning to help build the “better for you” category.
Challenges
The Hershey Company was facing a shift toward well-being in the confectionery market driven by consumer health concerns, shopper behavior and government intervention. Hershey’s main product lines were likely to face increasing growth challenges and competitive pressures, potentially causing a loss of market of share.
Actions
Developed a “balanced choices” brand positioning that provided greater product differentiation and clearly articulated consumer benefits
Identified options to bring the brand positioning to life including new packaging vs. an endorsement strategy with existing packaging look and feel
Evaluated in-store aisle architecture options and defined in-aisle organizing principles based on usage occasions including better for you, gifts and fine chocolate gift-giving, candy dish, movie candy, gum and mint, and fruity and chewy
Defined the look and feel of the confectionary aisle by developing unifying elements for packaging and information communications hierarchy to complement the aisle architecture
Provided a point-of view on other in-store opportunities to build “better for you” credibility (e.g., integrating “permissible claims” on core brands while maintaining the integrity of these brands)
Developed a flexible kit-of-parts approach that could work across retail channels, appealed to target customer segments, and could be consistently tailored and applied to multi-channel retail partners in order to build brand equity in the confection aisle and migrate to the front-end over time