For all of us, it's about predicting where the consumer is going and getting half of
it right.
One of the things we want to do is create ads that don't suck.
Embracing change creates great possibility.
I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Today.
My name is Bill Bluebaugh.
I'm the Senior Brand Director on Sweets and Refreshment Brands at the Hershey Company.
Well congrats for the FE.
Thank you.
I'm going to read this because it's a long one.
A new media model to transform a brand you suck.
That's right.
I want to make sure I got that right.
That's right.
This is for Jolly Rancher.
Jolly Rancher, the brand you suck.
Yes.
So tell us a little bit about what was the campaign.
The campaign was just a new idea, a fresh idea for the Jolly Rancher brand that everybody
has known and loved for many, many years.
We were just trying to land a good consumer insight with a brand insight.
One thing we heard was that Jolly Rancher is the brand that you suck.
When you're in these sucky, boring situations, it really came from a powerful consumer insight
linked to a really strong usage occasion for the brand.
We created the campaign, Keep On Sucking with Jolly Rancher.
You can't really beat that line.
No, it's pretty memorable.
What kind of pivotal decisions were there along the way to take on this issue of sucking,
right?
That must have been one.
That was one of them.
But actually that was the less difficult one.
I think actually this campaign marked a change in the way that Hershey markets, and we were
intentionally trying to evolve our marketing model.
We chose Jolly Rancher to be one of those brands to push the company, try new things
from a media standpoint as well as a content development standpoint.
Some of the big changes that we overcame were just a traditional campaign and a traditional
media model.
We created a new campaign that was integrated with the media model.
That was one thing.
That was a new muscle for us.
We also had to shift from being an advertiser to a publisher.
That was the mindset shift for us on this, was that we're not just producing 15 second
TV spots.
We're going to go where the consumer is, which is obviously much more digitally based, and
our campaign idea with our fruit gang, which is a animated interpretation of the brand
fruit flavors.
We basically are now publishing over 3,000 pieces of content annually across many different
media channels.
How did you tackle that?
Partners had to be a big component of it.
It's a lot of content to create, a lot to manage.
We actually hired new partners for this.
Anomaly is our creative agency here based out of New York.
They were hired intentionally to help us and help push us and evolve us, along with
UM, our media agency.
We were between Anomaly and UM.
We had to have a really strong partnership, not just between those two, but also the brand
team, and then also our integrated marketing team at Hershey as well, as well as our social
listening team and we call our H-Pulse, people who are constantly monitoring what's being
said about our brands back at Hershey.
A lot of collaboration across all those key business partners.
One aspect of the campaign was responding in social media with personalized response.
From a brand control standpoint, that could be a little scary.
Was there any trick to that or any guardrails?
How did you get comfortable with that as a brand, I guess?
That was different for us.
One-to-one consumer contact was really the model.
We're going to be on platforms.
You can't be showing up there like the company.
You have to be showing up like a person.
That's what the fruit gang enabled us to do, was to show up and have one-to-one dialogue
with consumers online.
We had to obviously rapidly change how we sought approvals for content that we're promoting.
We created a box and said, within this box, all this stuff is fair game.
These are the things we should be talking about.
These are the ways that we should be talking about it with consumers.
We defined that with the agency and also with our internal monitoring team as well.
We had a rapid approval process.
Frankly, as long as they were within the box, we felt pretty confident that it was not going
to be a problem.
You talked about this box that you built to rapid response.
That's an innovation in and of itself, but I'm sure some things needed to be outside
the box.
The better stuff was also.
How did the team respond and what was the organization's response rate like?
We have a team, H-Pulse, which sits in Hershey and they're constantly monitoring.
They also have a direct line and legal representation as well.
By having that team, it enables us to get approvals on content within hours.
Ideally we'd like real time, but if something is a little different, maybe we'll take maybe
an hour or two hours versus one to two days.
It's really transformative for us to be able to still be nimble, not within minutes, but
within hours.
Hours is quick.
What was it like before this was in place?
Before this, we were spending a lot of time waiting for teams to meet and review content.
We'd have weekly meetings that we would submit content to.
We still have those for things that don't require such rapid responses, but we have
like I said, it transformed our processes to review and approve and provide feedback
on content.
It was really one of the organizational breakthroughs for us as well.
This H-Pulse team, it sounds like almost a SWAT team that's looking over what's going
on in the world.
I imagine it's also a source of insight.
Absolutely.
How does that drive the brand?
Yeah.
H-Pulse is one component.
We also have our agency partners, both UM as well as Anomaly, are constantly monitoring
and hearing things in social media as well.
Between those three entities, we're constantly and continually monitoring and we get daily
reports as well as weekly, more robust reports on a weekly basis.
For instance, if we post something and we see consumers really respond positively or
neutral to it, we know that within hours.
If something, we go live with a post or we go live with a piece of content or something
pops up, within minutes, we're going to know and be alerted and our H-Pulse team or Anomaly
or UM will send us a note and say, hey, this is happening.
We recommend or you may want to think about doing X and Y.
It really is real-time monitoring, but then also the insights and the reporting that we
never had before with regard to engagement rates and just sort of reach and sentiment
has really come a long way in the last 18 months.
Winning NF is about marketing effectiveness.
How do you define it?
Marketing effectiveness to me is really about just motivating people.
Whether you're motivating them to laugh, whether you're motivating them to say like or whether
you're motivating them to say comment on your post or buy a product, it all comes with,
you have to do things and you have to market to consumers in a way that motivates them
because just showing up is only part of the game.
That's really what we're trying to do now is not only just show up, but now also motivate
them to remember and enjoy being with us.
I love getting to know the person across from me and you've reached the level of success
in your career.
Is there a moment in your past that defines who you've become?
Well, actually, this campaign has been pretty career-defining for me, so I've been at Hershey
a number of years and I've been more in a traditional marketing model and we've gotten
really good at that.
Being away from a traditional marketing model was a big challenge for me as a marketer,
but now looking back 18 months after we launched this campaign, it was really kind of a career-defining
moment for me is like now I feel like, hey, these brave new channels, this brand new media
model is really not that difficult and not that different.
This just requires a different set of skills that I feel like I've been honing those now.
Is there a favorite part of the job you've got now?
Honestly, my favorite part of my job right now is going online, usually laying in bed,
looking at the social feed of Jolly Rancher and just hearing consumers talk to us, engage
with us, tell us which flavor is their favorite flavor, tell us that they're really interested
in these types of flavors and how they use the product and just hearing the brand communicate
in a very appropriate tone with them and it's really fun to watch.
It's almost like a little sitcom with our characters going back and forth, so that's
really one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.
Has there been anything that surprised you going through this process, this evolution
that you have?
I have two young kids, so it didn't surprise me that younger consumers really expect and
want to engage, but it was sort of surprising how willing consumers were to just jump in
on stuff and start talking about Jolly Rancher and why Grape sucks and why I really like
Blue Raspberry and why Watermelon, I wish I had a bag just with Watermelon and all of
those sort of consumer conversations that were happening, but now you're actually involved
in that conversation and hearing it firsthand, which is really cool.
Well, I've learned that marketers are students of the business, so are there brands that
you follow or you think other people should be taking notice of these days?
I mean, there's just a lot of brands that you respect over the years, and I think one
of the keys is to make sure that you are evolving the way that you connect with consumers,
and obviously some of the new brands like Apple and Amazon are really powerful brands
because they have a really powerful communication and connection with the consumers.
By being at Hershey and being one of those marketers has marketed legacy brands, I tend
to look at sort of those older brands that have sort of stood the test of time and been
marketed really well, and I look at Converse as being one of those great brands as somebody
who grew up with a pair of Converse to play basketball in my fourth grade, it's just as
relevant to my 10-year-old and my 16-year-old as it was to me back 50 years ago, so they've
obviously done a really nice job of staying connected to the consumer over time.
What do you see as the most important opportunity for marketers today?
I really think the opportunity is in making sure that you're connecting in a way that
is right for the consumers, so it's not like the days of look at this ad, look at this
ad, look at this ad are sort of over.
Certainly we want them to see stuff that we produce, but we also want to hear from them.
We want to be engaging them and have them in on the conversation and the dialogue, because
that's really when I think you create a stronger relationship with the consumer is when they're
actually almost like being heard.
It's just like when mom tells you to do something over and over again, when she asks you what
would you like to do, it's like a total turnaround, and I think that's what's happening and that's
what it's expected of brands today is that you ask and you actually connect with consumers.
Is there a challenge or a set of challenges out there that you're wrestling with today
to you?
Yeah, content development, obviously content is king, making sure that you have really
strong content that cuts through, but yet also is something that we can efficiently
produce because obviously you have limitations on budget, so we're still struggling and trying
to figure out what are the best ways to develop really strong, rich content in a very nimble
and cost-effective way.
If you were to have your crystal ball out in front of you, what would you predict for
the future of marketing?
Where do you think it's going to go?
I honestly see a lot of turning brands over to consumers and user-generated content, something
that we're really interested in, and giving consumers tools and assets that they can actually
help create with your brand is something that I see as a next evolution of just consumer
engagement.
So from 15-second consumption of TV ads to online engagement to a consumer actually creating
something with you or for you, I think that's the next chapter of consumer engagement.
Bill, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Thanks for having me.
