Hershey International Driving Purpose Through Celebrating Women

Hershey’s International Business has taken its historic values of “doing good” in the community and supporting important causes and turned them into innovative product and marketing programs that make a difference in society and deliver on the companies purpose of “making more moments of goodness.”  This year, Hershey International put these beliefs into action with a series of programs acorss Brazil, India and Mexico to celebrate often overlooked women in our society. 

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In all three markets, the teams changed the wrappers of the iconic Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars to feature important and iconoslatic women who are making a difference.  The campaign gave voice and made more visibile women who are making life better and having a positive impact on our socitey.  The bars feature these women and specifically highlight the words “HER” or “SHE,” which are both part of Hershey’s brand name.  Hershey’s bars became a canvas for the beautiful stories of unsung “SHEROES” offered in a celebratory momento pack. 

These cause-related marketing programs have also shown resonance amongst consumers and have driven the Hershey’s brand forward in these markets.  The programs also created opportunities for related digital and social media activation.

Hershey India collaborated with phenomenal women leaders such as Kriti Bharti, Roxanne Davur, Sairee Chahal and Falguni Vasavada whose body of work and achievements were custom illustrated on Hershey’s chocolate bars by accomplished women illustrators. The list of illustrators included renowned names such as Maanvi Kapur, Surabhi Banerjee, Anandhi Kumar and Anushri Saraogi respectively. These packs celebrating womanhood were presented to the women achievers by Hershey India and were revealed through a digital campaign. The campaign also encouraged women from across the nation to come forward and share their amazing stories. 

In Mexico, the company celebrated local women entrepreneurs who have supported and developed less privileged women by sharing their picture and story on Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars, promoting these women on their website and on limited-edition chocolate bars that generated strong consumer engagement.  In Brazil, the team created an online art gallery that features more than 300 new female artists who provided more than 3,000 hours of art coaching and class for aspiring artist. The HerShe gallery is nested on Instagram @hersheybr.  

“The recognition of the important contributions women make every day in our society and the need to create an outlet for their voice was a key insight that gave rise to our special packaging and marketing campagin,” said Rohit Grover, Presdient, Hershey Intenational. “So many women are doing incredible things every day and yet are largely unknown.  These programs gave them a platform and brought them to light to celebrate their amazing contributions.” 

In India, the campaign reached two million viewers in one week on Instagram highlights and generated user content of unsung “Sheroes” from the eyes of other women artists. 

Started in Brazil in 2019, the concept has spread to other global markets and the U.S. business also produced special bars celebrating women in 2021.  The campaign in Brazil has even proven to be award-winning, recently earning two bronze Lions in the “entertainment” and “industry craft” categories at the Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world’s leading festival recognizing marketing creative excellence.  

“As a company that embraces diversity and equality, we saw a unique insight into how we can make visible the role of forgotten or somewhat invisible women who make such an important difference in our society,” said Santhi Ramesh, Senior Director of Marketing, Innovation, Growth & Digital for Hershey International.  “These campaigns celebrate women while communicating our brand values and the values we share with our consumers.  The user generated content was real and authentic and as a result, they not only broke through, but also resonated strongly with consumers.”

Mr. Herjit Bhalla, Vice President, India and AEMEA at The Hershey Company said, “With the HER-SHE campaign, we at Hershey India took a step forward to celebrate some of the brave, intelligent and revolutionary women who displayed excellence in the face of insurmountable odds. This campaign for Hershey’s chocolate bars is a small token of our appreciation to encourage a journey towards positive change and celebrate these women leaders, because their stories need to be known.”

The campaigns reflect The Hershey Company’s deep commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion as the company has made a global commitment to pay women $1 for $1 compared to their male counterparts and for inclusive representation with women representing 47-50% of our workforce globally by 2025.  Women’s representation today is at 46 percent.