Brad Reese used to eat a Reese's product every day. Not anymore. The 70-year-old grandson of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups inventor H.B. Reese wrote a scathing open letter to Hershey accusing the candy giant of replacing milk chocolate with compound coatings and peanut butter with peanut crème in multiple products. He recently threw out a bag of Reese's Mini Hearts. "It was not edible," he told the Associated Press.
The brand sits right at the warm, gooey center of everyone's subconscious. That's how Hershey's bars can sell on American store shelves for 125 years, in the same boring candy bar wrapper - dull gray letters on a field of brown - without much emphasis on paid media at all. So when Hershey's takes the rare step of overhauling its brand marketing creative and communications platform, it is news. And this Wednesday marks the beginning of Hershey's first major brand marketing campaign since 2018,
This year, Hershey rolled out its classic holiday offerings, including festive shapes, themed packaging, and seasonal favorites, alongside new innovations such as Reese's Peanut Butter Mini Pumpkins sold unwrapped in resealable bags to cut packaging costs. Yet during the company's October 30 earnings call, CEO Kirk Tanner noted that Halloween candy sales were off to a slow start. He said some of the lag may have been due to Halloween falling on a Friday this year, which tends to move the final sales push later in the season.
