Hershey’s AI-Powered Ad Campaign Sold More Candy and Gave It Leverage With Retailers

  Rassegna Stampa, Social
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When The Hershey Company used AI to drive its media placements in a recent campaign, it not only sold more candy but also gave the confectionary brand an advantage in its negotiations with retailers.

Hershey’s partnered with Chalice Custom Algorithms for a Halloween campaign, a make-or-break period for candy brands, that incorporated its sales data. The brand served more ads in real time to markets where candy wasn’t selling and fewer ads to locations where Hershey’s was already flying off shelves.

The strategy sold candy so effectively that the brand’s sales team used it as leverage during negotiations with retailers, said Vinny Rinaldi, Hershey’s head of media and analytics at the Possible conference in Miami Beach.

“This is a little bit of a pivot away from ‘you have to buy retail media,’” Rinaldi said. “It’s a way to say ‘Hey, we’re actually supporting your stores.’”

Retail media has complicated the relationship between brands and the retailers that sell their goods. Even though interest in retail media is surging, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies often feel pressure to buy ads from retailers to ensure their products show up on shelves.

Retailers will remain key partners in Hershey’s media strategy, which is powered by their sales data, Rinaldi said. Still, brands that build media plans that drive sales can show they don’t need to buy more retail media ads than necessary to drive good performance.

“You’ve got a weapon in the fight,” said Lou Paskalis, CEO of AJL Advisory and a longtime brand marketer, who moderated Hershey’s panel at Possible. A brand could buy retail media, “or [a brand] could actually use media dollars to drive product data to the store. Which do you want? It’s a different conversation. It’s about leverage.”

How custom algorithms work

Programmatic buyers can use off-the-shelf algorithms from demand-side platforms, but these are often optimized around media goals like video completion rates, rather than business goals like sales, Rinaldi previously told ADWEEK.

With custom algorithms, brands can build bespoke media plans for particular objectives using their own data sets.

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