Hershey History Summary

The Hershey Company, formally known as Hershey Foods Corporation up until April 2005, holds the top position in the U.S. confectionery market. Milton Hershey started his first candy business in 1876 called Crystal A Caramels. It wasn’t until 1894 that Milton started experimenting with making chocolates. His first accomplishment was chocolate as a coating on his caramels. In 1900 Hershey sold his caramel company to focus on chocolate, and later that year the first milk chocolate bar was introduced to Americans. The company has only grown from there now producing not only chocolate, but other types of candies, as well as baking goods.

Hershey’s Thoughts on Advertising

Although the Hershey Company was started in 1900, it was not until 1969 that the company started advertising! (Our Story: Hershey Company) It’s hard to believe that a company survived 69 years without ever putting in an effort to promote its products.

Milton Hershey didn’t believe in putting his time, energy, or money into promoting his products; He built his whole company without ads for 69 years. According to my marketing class, this was partially during the production era which is when the prevailing attitude of marketers was that “a good product will sell itself”. Although this era explains Milton’s attitudes towards marketing his products prior to the 1920’s, this theory doesn’t fully explain his thinking on advertising from 1930-1969.

From the 20’s to the 40’s, Hershey was a great promoter of his products. Now in this sense, one needs to understand the difference between Promoter and Marketer. In this context, marketing is meaning national advertising. This would be things including print, radio and of course television. Hershey did not believe in marketing nationally.

Milton built a huge plant, built an amusement park, theater, and stadium all in the town named Hershey. He would invite people to come visit the town and all it had to offer which was a great way of promoting his company. He believed his best form of promotion, ,though, was Hershey chocolate bar wrappers thrown on the ground as garbage. These were, in a sense, forms of free advertising for the Hershey Company. (Reference for Business) He also valued word-of-mouth as another source of advertising for most of the companies existence.

Another thing that really helped promote Hershey was the Hershey School for Neglected Boys. Milton opened this school back in 1909 and it brought the company a lot of positive publicity. The school owns most of the company today and continues to be positive "advertising" for the company.

A Push for Marketing

Marketing and advertising moved forward in the late 60’s thanks to William Dearden. Dearden attended the Hershey school after his mother passed away when he was 13 and eventually worked his way up to run the Hershey Company. He was the one that hired professional marketers (Ogilvy & Mather ad Agency) to change the landscape of Hershey advertising in the late 1960’s. This push to suddenly advertise was caused by people becoming more health conscious and as a result of that, candy consumption declined. The idea of advertising seemed to be the only hope for candy at this time so this provoked Hershey to launch a national campaign.

These plans to push advertising of the company began with an ad in 114 Sunday newspapers in July of 1970. (Hershey’s History) A short two months later Hershey launched its first television and radio commercials. The campaign was an immediate success because of all the attention they were given since they had previously never advertised before.

Hershey's First Print Ad: 1970

E.T. Makes a Good Choice

In 1982 M&Ms passed up the chance of a lifetime when they chose to not have their candy used to lure the shy little alien from his hiding place in the movie E.T.. Good thing for Hershey, because they were able to swoop up that opportunity and take it for all it was worth. Hershey didn't pay to have Reese's Pieces placed in the movie. Instead Hershey made a deal to promote E.T. with $1million of advertising if Hershey could use E.T. in its own ads. This was Reese's big break; sales tripled within 2 weeks of the movie's premiere.

Hershey Goes International

Hershey is not only the leading producer of chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery products in North America. The company carries an significant international presence; having operations in more than 90 different countries. Hershey holds onto its consumers and gets them involved in advertising with their catchy slogans like "There's a smile in every Hershey Bar" and "The great American chocolate bar" as well as jingles like "put a smile on your face". (Hershey Chocolate Advertising, Public Relations and Promotions)

Hershey Today

Hershey has grown from a mere $334 million in 1969 when it first started advertising to 4.4 billion recorded in 2004. (Hershey History) This is due to increased technological modernization, new product development, and advertising over the last 30 years of thee 20th century.