Hershey’s Canada | Her For She
Multimedia - Insight

The Challenge & Goal

Hershey’s is a legacy brand rooted in nostalgia. As customers continue to age, there is a need to find a way to re-invent Hershey’s relevance to a younger generation beyond just being a beloved chocolate bar. With 67% of Gen Z's and Millennials expecting authenticity and transparency from brands, Hershey’s needed to evolve to address the philosophical ethos of a younger generation: do social good through tangible change and empathy-led initiatives.

Leveraging the global campaign #HerforShe for International Women’s Day (IWD) was an opportunity for Hershey’s to resonate with a younger female audience, while building local relevance for a global CSR initiative.

The Insights & Strategy

Sold in every corner store for generations, Hershey’s had a front row seat to street culture - a space where realness trumps all and people demand to be seen for who they are. We knew this authenticity and energy would resonate with a younger audience. With representation of women in street culture often underrepresented and minimized, highlighting the achievements of women in this space would bring visibility to the under-recognized and inspire the next generation.

Multimedia Execution

With empowering women-lead stories at its core, we brought to life a campaign with multiple touchpoints. We teamed up with notable street artist Gosia Komorski to design distinctive Hershey’s wrappers that featured five Canadian women who were changing the street scene and making an impact on their communities. 

Then we shot five mini docu-style films that told each woman's story in their own words, and reached beyond hype culture to see the grassroots activism that street culture really is.  

Campaign boxes were created with pamphlets that dove even deeper into each woman’s story, which were sent out to influencers, media and our partners at Girl Up so they could create and share their own authentic content and amplify our message. 

These creative elements along with a robust multi-level PR and digital rollout unlocked new ways to broaden our reach - including key partnerships, earned and paid influencer strategy, and paid digital that drove traffic back to the stories told in the five docu-films.

Our campaign came alive on IG, FB, and TikTok, spreading the narrative through this generation's form of communication through social influence. 

Results & Impact

In a time when we are unable to gather IRL, we created conversation and a community online to celebrate women’s accomplishments.

The campaign was a success in Canada, with 350+ pieces of coverage across various media and influencer platforms, receiving 200.9M total impressions. Our earned media coverage gathered 6,343,345 impressions and 8,012,461 impressions on social media. Our paid media coverage garnered 6,821,203 total online and social impressions, with our advertorial campaign with Narcity Canada making up about 4M of the total impressions, surpassing the estimated 2.5M total impressions. Our paid influencers garnered 1,205,519 total impressions on Instagram alone. The paid digital campaign garnered 178.6M impressions over the six days in-market, surpassing our goal of 26M estimated impressions.

#HerForShe bridged the gap between Hershey’s and a Gen Z / Millennial audience, by emphasizing shared values of diversity and inclusion, while using compelling storytelling to bring visibility to women’s achievements and inspire a new generation of women leaders.