How Hershey's Leveraged their Brand Recognition for an International Women's Day Campaign

Hershey’s is an iconic brand. Even I, being from a country (Ireland) where Hershey’s is not widely sold, can quite quickly recognise the famous logo and its bold font by seeing only a limited number of the letters used. It was this powerful brand awareness that Hershey’s took advantage of when developing a clever promotional campaign to celebrate International Women’s Day in Brazil. Using only the letters HER or SHE from the Hershey’s logo on each bar, the company was able to form the phrases ‘HER Dream’ and ‘SHE Dreams’, while still maintaining full brand recognition among consumers.

This level of brand awareness is only achieved through constant commitment to the three main principles of brand development, which are: quality, consistency and simplicity. In other words, a brand should be attractive in its use of visuals, it should stay tied together at the base level by a logo and/or colour scheme that remains recognisable in spite of the passage of time and also be as simple as possible with regard to its design. These three principles are a common thread running through the most iconic and recognisable brands in the world, such as Coca-Cola, Guinness, IBM, Google, 3M, Nike, Apple, Olympics and McDonalds to name a few.

The Hershey’s logo with its bold, condensed font and traditionally simple and unchanging packaging makes it one of the most recognisable confectionery brands in the Americas. The power of the brand enables it to run promotional campaigns like the one seen in this post effectively and without harming brand visibility.

An excerpt from the agencies involved:

Hershey Salutes the Artistic Spirit of Women in Latest ‘Her/She’ Work A music video, new packaging and more. Building on its “Her/She” campaign from last year, where iconic women appeared on Hershey’s chocolate bar packaging for International Women’s Day. This time, the packaging exhibits eight woman artists.

The work includes a music video for musician Yzalú – who appeared in last year’s campaign – singing “Qual Teu Sonho?” (“What’s Your Dream?”). It features women in various states of creation, and is diverse in a multiplicity of satisfying ways.

The artists who appear in the work are breakdancer Aline Constantino, who considers dance an art of social transformation; Filipa Aurélio, who photographs the Brazilian independent music circuit; Luz Ribeiro, an author, slam poet and member of the theater group Collective Self-Defense; illustrator Amanda Lobos; Afrofuturist graffiti artist Regina Elias Ziza; poet and cultural producer Carolina Peixoto; singer/songwriter Indy Naíse; and embroiderer Mitti Mendonça, whose Black Hand seal continues an embroidery tradition that has circulated her family for nearly 100 years.