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In an age of democratized content, consumers still expect the unexpected: Hershey?s exec

NEW YORK ? An executive from Hershey?s provided attendees of Mobile FirstLook 2017 a masterclass in the company?s approach to connected marketing, based on insight that found 30 percent of consumers become anxious when they do not have their phones.

The executive also provided some background on the kind of mobile and content environment that Hershey?s believes its consumers operate within, and claimed that ?technological advances over the past five years have dramatically affected consumer behavior.? She described all Hershey?s consumers as ?mobile consumers,? and trotted out millennial-focused statistics on mobile usage, noting that 87 percent of them have their phone at their side day and night and that they check their phones 150 times per day, on average.

?Linear TV viewing is down, and at the same time digital TV viewership is up,? said Ronalee Zarate-Bayani, head of global integrated marketing and digital advancement at The Hershey Co. ?That delta is increasing more and more, and will only increase even more so in the coming years.?

The Hershey Co.
Within such a connected landscape, Hershey?s made the decision to require its marketing efforts to become just as connected, which, in turn, required connectedness within the infrastructures creating and releasing said marketing efforts.

?Silos reduce agility, they waste resources,? Ms. Zarate-Bayani said. ?It takes a village to win in a village in a very complex landscape, and you need everyone in that village to come together. 

?We need data, we need analytics, we need marketing, and we need them all to come together,? she said.


Ms. Zarate-Bayani said that Hershey?s looks to put the consumer at the center of its marketing campaigns, and then overlay context and culture.

One example of the ethos was a Christmas campaign held by Hershey?s property Reeses, in which it released Christmas-tree shaped chocolates that resembled a certain kind of waste. In any case, an undesirable association for a chocolate brand.

Instead of hiding or responding with corporate platitude, Hershey?s decided to parlay the attention the product was getting as a catalyst for unexpected behavior with the #AllTreesAreBeautiful campaign, which resulted in week over week of increasing sales. 

Marketing fundamentals
Hershey?s tends to hew to tried-and-tested marketing fundamentals, leveraging an ownable brand strategy and consumer-centric insights into a workflow into a process that looks to get consumers attentions, provide a unique experience, drive to meaningful brand content, engage the consumer and, finally, convert consumer interest to sales. 

One campaign that spontaneously achieved all of these goals piggybacked off a viral moment on social media, where a Kansas State University student Tweeted a photo of a napkin that someone who stole a KitKat bar out of his car wrote to him. KitKat responded to the Tweet, and used the moment as an opportunity to fill his car with KitKat bars, a stunt that garnered the attention of over 200 media outlets for The Hershey Co. property.


?Content can manifest itself in a full experience, a single expression, and a way to engage with the brand,? Ms. Zarate-Bayani said. ?You have to build you brand with social today. 

?They will talk about you, you could be part of it, or you could let them build your brand for you.?

Ms. Zarate-Bayani also enumerated Hershey?s categories for mobile moments and the future it believes is in store for each. They include ?My experience now,? manifesting in the exploding live video market, which is forecasted be worth $70 billon in ten years; ?My experience made better,? relating to the booming VR market; ?My search made easier,? with voice search on the rise and 55 percent of teens and 41 percent of adults using voice search more than once a day; and ?My way to discover and uncover,? as 69 percent of mobile users are more likely to buy from companies whose mobile sites or apps help them easily find answers.

?We?re in a world today where everything is media,? Ms. Zarate-Bayani said. ?It?s not just print, it?s not just digital, it?s not just a mobile device. 

?A car with a bumper sticker is media," she said. "A shirt with a logo is media.

"And content creation is democratized. We as brands are not fighting against other brands. We?re fighting against the stimuli surrounding us 24/7.?