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Jolly Rancher breeds mobile success focusing on social content over apps

NEW YORK ? A Hershey?s executive at the MMA Mobile Marketing Leadership Forum discussed the power of tailoring content to different social media platforms based on respective user behavior, a strategy that drove a 12.5 increase in hard candy sales for the marketer. 

During the session, Jolly Rancher Captures the Next Generation of Consumers, the executive revealed that Hershey?s Jolly Rancher brand had trouble connecting with the new young generation and switched to a social-first strategy and garnered significant success. The executive stressed the importance of creating ?thumb-stopping? material that captures users' attention within three seconds. 

"As a brand marketer, we have to think about what the three to five apps that they are spending the most time on and why," said Ronalee Zarate-Bayani, head of global integrated marketing and digital advancement at The Hershey Company.  "And that is really key, why.

"If you look at the mobile app landscape, at the end of the day, every month, apps rise and fall," she said. "The app du jour will change on a monthly basis, but the consistent mainstays are the social and messaging apps and constantly dominate the landscape. 

"They consistently take our target audiences' time, so for us a social-first approach is a mobile-first. It is a behavior, it is a lifestyle and it is forever with our consumer." 

Ranching mobile moments
It did not make sense for Jolly Rancher develop its own application for mobile, but Hershey knew it needed to have a mobile presence. After evaluating consumer behavior within apps, the candy brand realized that mobile messaging and social media platforms were the only ones that had consistent staying power with user behavior. 

Jolly Rancher then developed social media content that fit well with the experience on each respective platform, as consumers leverage each social media app for different reasons and actions. For instance, Twitter is most effective during various cultural events and Jolly Rancher content only appears congruent with key moments. 



For Snapchat, Jolly Rancher waited to see positive acquisition on the platform because it did not want to dive in without a key strategy and waste ad-spend budgets on something that fell flat. So after seeing positive effects on Snapchat, the brand dove in with a series of experiments to cater to the young demographic that worked well, and continues to do so. 

Ms. Zarate-Bayani mentioned that she believes the company now publishes more content than any of its competitors on social media, and any other CPG brand as well. 

Jolly on mobile
The executive also emphasized the importance of thinking of social media platforms as mobile-first platforms. Social media apps such as Snapchat, Instagram and Vine were developed mobile-first and only operate on mobile.

"The attention span of this audience is dwindling," said Ms. Zarate-Bayani. "As a marketer we have to get them, engage with them, connect with them, all in less than three seconds. 

"The amount of time spent on mobile is growing and will only continue to grow more and more," she said. "We are fighting with every piece of content that they experience. 

"It is not about us trying to compete with other brands, but about us trying to be relevant in a crazy world where there is constant stimuli at my fingertips, stimuli that I, as a consumer, am much more interested in than you as a brand."