Successful Brand Market is in Cultural Relevance

Successful brand market is in cultural relevance. The Hershey Company is uses a micro-marketing plan to manage the company’s many brands.  The Hershey Company was founded in 1900 by Milton and Catherine Hershey. Milton had a passion for making candy. For more information on this great story go to www.thehearsheycompany.com website. When talking about brands, it is important to note that Hershey, and product companies like Hershey, have many brands and … each of the Hershey family of candies has a designated twitter handle. The company, the amusement park, and the Milton Hershey School for Children also has twitter handles. Needless to say; there is a strong Hershey presence on twitter … or at least there was a strong presence.

Let me explain. The purpose of twitter is to provide a short, brief message of 280 characters where registered members of twitter can respond, retweet, or like the message. Some might call it micro-blogging. Twitter also allows for pictures and graphics. Recently, twitter has opened space for short videos or gifs. The strength of twitter is the use of hashtags. Hashtags connect content with audience and increase search engine optimization. The key to success is being in the right place at the right time and keeping the message simple, concise and CULTURALLY RELEVANT!

The Hershey Company join twitter in June 2015 … and by 2016 the company and all the brands were heavily tweeted in the twitter world. For one campaign, the Reese’s brand tweeted, “All trees are Beautiful!” in support of their Reeses’ peanut butter cups shaped like Christmas Trees. The response was amazing!!!

The tweet reached 1 billion impressions, 82% brand mentions, 146% brand positive sentiment, 13,000 hashtag mentions, and 260,000 social mentions. The rate of return was epic for their company and it was all through twitter. Through one very cultural relevant tweet, The Hershey Company’s Reeses’ peanut butter cup brand served their audience.

M.C. Hammer is one of the most followed Twitter Handles … he states, “Forget the numbers and just be interesting.” Just four years ago, Hershey was posting daily and sometimes many tweets per day … in 2019 The Hershey company has found the twitter is not as culturally relevant. The quantity of tweets has been reduced, but in the quality of tweets has increased. Leading up to Halloween when candy is given out to children, there were 23 tweets and 2 paid ads in the month of October. Following Halloween, in the month of November, there has only been 2 tweets. That doesn’t mean that Hershey is not watching twitter, because there have been a few customer comments or complaints in November, but within a few hours the issues is addressed and resolution is offered.

The bottom line is Twitter has evolved to presenting information and linking the user through hashtags, functional content, inbound links, with pictures and videos… the point is to propagate the story by being relevant and interesting. In order to be convey the message, the tweets are not in volume, but in significance. The Hershey company has exchanged the twitter madness for concise, culturally relevant content. Which drives us back to knowing the demographics and psychographics of our target persona.

I believe there is good advice in follow following The Hershey Company and M.C. Hammer … “Don’t count the numbers, just be interesting.” Being interesting is knowing what people are interested in. Which drives us back to knowing the demographics and psychographics of our target persona … than Successful Brand Market is in Cultural Relevance.

Thanks for listening and be sure to look me up on twitter … Donald Crane.

You know I love ya,  Don