Hershey's Advertising History- Blog #2

 

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.

Sources:


Hershey Chocolate Advertising, Public Relations and Promotions
http://www.suite101.com/content/hershey-chocolate-advertising-public-relations-and--promotions-a268240


Reference for business
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pTjvpJ9EcFUJ:www.referenceforbusiness.com/businesses/G-L/Hershey-Milton.html+Hershey+William+dierden+advertising&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


Our Story: Hershey Company
http://www.hersheys.com/our-story.aspx#/the-man


Hershey's History
http://www.thehersheycompany.com/about-hershey/our-story/hersheys-history.aspx

Advertising to Children: Entry #1

An issue that goes way back and is still a prominent issue today in society is advertising to children. Children are easily influenced and like to experiment with new things so advertising to children has become a very sensitive, emotionally charged issue. It is an issue that is not only a concern to the general public, but also to industry and lawmakers. Advertising to children in perceived as evil because it makes kids want what they don’t need and puts pressure on parents to respond to those needs. The children’s market is huge and that is what it is becoming such a big issue today on what to do about it. There is a lot at stake.

I have read 3 different articles that look at different perspectives on children and advertising; these being from the standpoint of the companies promoting the products, parents and society's take on the issue,  if children are really noticing these advertisements, and what is being done about the issue.

For companies, marketing to children seems to be a good decision even if the products aren’t necessarily child friendly. I don’t agree with what they do most of the time but they are being pretty smart about what they are doing if you really look at it. Parents typically give into what their children want to some degree, so for advertisers to make their advertisements more “child friendly” will help them get what they want. This is doing things like having a cartoon character to promote the product so that children will remember it, for example the Marlboro man. Cigarettes aren’t meant for children obviously, but children think that it is cool because all they know about the product is what they see the Marlboro man do. Another thing advertisers do is make advertisements flashy with lots of colors to attract a child’s attention. Children see these things and instantly think “wow this is cool, I have to have this” then they proceed to ask their parents for the product. In return parents these days will usually give their child what they want, upping sales for the companies.

There then is the standpoint of parents and the rest of society. Like I stated earlier, there are advertisements that are geared specifically for children most being ones involving cartoon characters. Children see these and feel like they are the only ones with the ability of purchasing the item and that they need to have it. Truth is the purchasing pressure is then put on the parents. I don’t think it is right for companies to be making advertisements specifically for children when, the children themselves, aren’t the ones who can make the purchases. Children are too young to realize the manipulations that are going on through television or media advertisements and also do not realize the financial pressures that come with the purchase of items. It just doesn’t seem right to be gearing these products to kids when they aren’t the ones that can make the purchases, let alone that some of the advertisements geared towards them are for products that aren’t meant for children anyways.

Do children really notice ads? is what one article looked at. It is believed that when children play games that are meant for advertising, like “be a Popstar” by honeycomb cereal brand, fails to raise awareness of the product to children. A study was done with 112 fourth-graders playing this popstar game; some of the children had a version of the game with ad labels in the game and others played a version with the labels removed. After playing the game, the children were asked to identify the source of the game, and there was no significant difference in the responses of the two groups (Children Fail to Recognize Online Ads, Study Says, New York Times). So this makes some think, “Is advertising to children really that bad? Is it really helping companies to reach a bigger audience?” I believe advertising affects everyone weather we notice it or not. You may not be necessarily paying attention to the ad, but unconsciously you are taking in the information. So I’m not quite sure what to think abut this study at the moment.

In 1990, the Children’s Television Act was passed and still remains effective today. This Act states:

“Ages 12 and under: The amount of advertising aired during children's programming should be limited to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays -- still more than for adult prime time;

Ages 16 and under: The FCC is required to consider the amount of educational programming that a broadcaster presents in approving license renewals and examine the role of "program-length commercials.” (Advertising to children, AEF.com)

 There are many laws and regulations still being created today to protect children from certain types of advertising.

Sources:

Advertising to children
http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/3005


Children fail to recognize online ads
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/children-fail-to-recognize-online-ads-study-says/

Advertising to children canada
http://www.acaweb.ca/en/current-issues/advertising-to-children/