Case Study: Hershey India#Happy@Home Campaign

• Problem statement / Objective of the campaign:

Brand Hershey’s strives to enable warm bonding moments with loved ones. The pandemic enabled consumers spending more time in home and with their loved ones. With opening up and subsequent normalization, the desire to spend time with loved ones stays intact, while consumers find different ways of enabling the same, through weekday treats, weekend family gatherings and special occasions, both macro and micro. The objective of ‘Happy@Home with Hershey’s’ campaign was to enable consumers to indulge in such family bonding moments by becoming an ally for them as they started looking for ways to make snacking moments more special and delightful. 

• Brief Summary of the campaign: 

As an aftermath of the lockdown, we observed significant behavioral trends within our core consumers. As kids started to head back to school, we saw an emerging trend among mother of kids (MOKs) for quick and nutritious recipes for breakfast & snacking moments, and how to make milk more exciting. On the other hand, for Gen Z consumers, we saw an increase in weekend binge, which was further backed by their increased content consumption on weekends. The campaign aimed to leverage these keywords and trends to increase consumer demand and sales for Hershey's line of products.

Hershey India tapped into search trends, consumer studies and social listening. The team discovered that there was an increased consumption of MOKs on recipe videos on YouTube. Parallelly, there was a significant increase in OTT viewership, especially on weekends by Gen Z and increased social media consumption overall. With a mission to partner the consumer in this journey, Hershey India pivoted its digital assets to address the consumer needs. The brand further tapped into these moments through contextual targeting on relevant platforms, for example, OTT buys on Gen Z first content on weekends with recipes, to dial up the indulgence. On the other hand, the brand partnered with YouTube to target moms actively consuming recipe content.

Hershey India joined hands with renowned celebrity chef Ranveer Brar to make everyday dishes interesting by using Hershey's range of products; a bank of 100+ recipes at home. 

Further the brand closed the loop to drive trials, by creating 6 sec films with Ranveer Brar to target users who had viewed the recipes, urging them to purchase the product on Amazon.

• Creative Idea: 

The key behavioural trends married with key consumer insights and search trends were able to define five major buckets – 'Quick & Easy breakfast recipes', 'Nutritious recipes', 'Cake N' Bake recipes', 'Summer coolers' and 'Milkshakes recipes', ‘Weekend indulgence’ and ‘Chill with Ice Cream’.

The idea was to curate a collection of 100+ Easy Home recipes through relatable content pieces across relevant media touchpoints. These were made available for people and budding chefs who were looking for recipes online; reaching out to them at the right time and platform where they were searching for such solutions. This year the brand launched third season of Happy@Home with a series of fresh and unique recipes aimed to appeal to cooking and baking enthusiasts. It also encouraged families to cook together and strengthen their bonds.

• Challenges:
  Having survived the pandemic for two years confined at home, fortunately the third year brought a sigh of relief with a significant drop in the severity of covid. This resulted in the transition of Happy@Home core proposition - snacking moments at home to delight bonding moments. The challenge was to establish Syrup as an enabler of indulgent snacking moments against the backdrop of the new normal.

• Execution:

Hershey India took an audience first approach and identified cohorts basis the recipe buckets created, and targeted them with maximum SOV on recipe videos to share quick 1-minute videos under each content peg. Additionally, Gen Z audiences viewing content on weekends were targeted with these recipes to dial up indulgence and build favorability. Finally, in order to drive trials, audiences who had viewed the recipes were targeted with customized communication to shop. Additionally in market audiences were identified and categorized as loyalists/lapsers and customized offers were shown to drive trials/repeat purchase

Engagement – 

Hershey’s wanted to ensure that the communication was targeted to the right people, at the right time, at the right place. 

• Right People: Moms of kids (MOKs), who form Hershey’s core TG & Gen Z
• Right Place: MOKs who actively search for content around Hershey’s buckets on YouTube; Gen Z audiences viewing OTT content
• Right Time: Hershey India mapped high value moments for each of the recipe buckets and used these to show customized messaging

Through day parting, Hershey’s targeted MOKs during morning hours for Quick & Easy breakfast recipes. For nutritious recipes Hershey’s targeted moms who actively look for health/fitness content. Similarly, cake n bake was targeted to moms who actively look for baking recipes and the summer coolers were targeted to moms of kids on days when the temperature rose above average. Weekend indulgence was targeted to Gen Z audiences on weekends.

Furthermore, by identifying distinctive content pegs to group recipes, Hershey India curated a YouTube cook list containing 100+ recipe videos where viewers were greeted by Chef Ranveer Brar cooking up simple and easy dishes using Hershey products. The recipes were further amplified through leading news media and digital new-age publications garnering over 500+ press coverage numbers.

• Campaign Stats on overall performance and success of the campaign:

Hershey’s adjacencies already have relatively high awareness levels, we focused primarily on the mid and lower funnel metrics where over a period of time we built on consideration followed by driving conversions.

• User Engagement – Campaign reached more than 12M users garnering 15M video views and 60M Impressions
• 10K customers shared their innovative recipes on social media
• Brand Lift Outcome- Campaign led to high brand TOM percolating into high consideration to buy
• Brand Awareness up by 9%
• Brand Favourability & Purchase intent up by 11%
• Business Outcome –Hershey’s Baking Product Sales up by 34% during this campaign
• Positive impact on sales across touch points
• Hershey India received press coverage in over 500+ Stories 

CMO Quote by Ankit Desai, Marketing Director, Hershey India:
“Hershey's products are all about fostering strong relationships with loved ones over food.  During the lockdown, we were intrigued by the steadily growing trend of families cooking and baking together at home. As we shift back to normalcy, it’s heartening to see the desire to spend time with loved ones stays intact. With the Happy@Home campaign featuring more than 100 simple and delicious recipes, we are glad to enable families with an enhanced experience to strengthen their bond while cooking and create priceless memories. Through our partnership with Chef Ranveer Brar, we are able to further strengthen our connection with our audience and give the campaign a more personalized touch.”