Reese’s $7 million misfire
Last month, Marketing Week maverick Mark Ritson gave Cadbury’s a dressing down for their 200th anniversary campaign. It wasn’t for the work, which was delivered brilliantly by VCCP, but for the brief in the first place.
In Mark’s view, celebrating the brand’s 200th anniversary the way that Cadbury’s did was bad for two reasons:
The customer doesn’t really care about how old brands are, and budget would be better spent on more strategically-minded advertising.
Reminding people how old you are runs the risk of becoming an old, stale icon.
Source: Marketing Week, 2024.
While I don’t think that Cadbury’s brand image is heading to the old people’s home any time soon, his first point intrigued me.
We make advertising to create and strengthen associations of our brands in the consumer’s mind. If the advertising doesn’t build the desired associations the brand has carved out for itself, then it’s arguably been wasteful.
Enter: Reese’s - another titanic chocolate brand, which aired an ad during Super Bowl LVIII a couple of weeks ago.
The Reese’s Cup: the pinnacle of American chocolate engineering.
I’ll start by saying that I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
As a British kid who landed in New York in the early 2000s, I soon discovered an entire world of new confectionery, like I had woken up on the floor of Willy Wonka’s factory. I felt like the literal kid in the not-so-proverbial candy store.
When my first Halloween rolled around, I vividly remember dragging a sack full of mysterious chocolate and sweets back home with me, panting with pride like I had hauled the carcass of a saber tooth tiger back to my club-wielding brethren.
Amongst a sea of honourable muncheons, Reese’s emerged a champion.
The simple yet elegant pairing of chocolate and peanut butter. The unconventional round cup with serrated edge. The orange, yellow, and black colours. It demanded attention — and devouring.
“Two great tastes that taste great together”
It wasn’t until a few years later when I discovered Reese’s iconic advertising, through a parody from Family Guy.
Playing on the delightful 'happy accident’ of chocolate mixed with peanut butter, Seth MacFarlane’s animated series imagines a darker origin story behind the beloved cup.
Original commercial and parody below:
The sweet taste of chocolate.
The salty hit of peanut butter.
The happy accident of one falling into the other.
The result being greater than the sum of its parts.
The line: “Two great tastes that taste great together”.
The 1972 ad, now over 50 years old, has the makings of a modern day brand platform.
For a reference point, we need look no further than its neighbour on the chocolate aisle: KitKat.
“Have a break, have a KitKat” was coined in 1957. That slogan set off a journey of disciplined brand stewardship that has created one of the most recognizable and easy-to-think of brands in confectionery.
Built on the simple belief that breaks are good for you, KitKat’s teams have worked tirelessly to tie the notion of ‘breaks’ with its chocolate-covered wafer. It puts the customer at the heart of its positioning. You need a break from the madness of life. What do you reach for when you finally take one?
Customer POV MIA
That brings us to Super Bowl LVIII and Reese’s latest ad.
Held up against its 1972 counterpart, a few things are disappointing.
The ad is entirely conceived from the perspective of the brand. “Our big announcement.” “Yes we are still making the original.” It’s an announcement devoid of empathy for the prospective chocolate eater or any attempt at customer insight.
The idea is creatively bankrupt. Related to the above point, the idea is not based on an interesting premise that might appeal to a prospective buyer, but rather the manufactured urgency of Reese’s altering / taking away their most successful product. A manufactured reality in which chocolate brand stops making beloved chocolate just falls flat.
There isn’t a clear, strong positioning. This is the most depressing, considering the product’s unique format and taste, the brand’s impact in culture, and the rich territory for which the advertising from 50 years ago laid the foundations. The lack of positioning is made abundantly clear in a post from Hershey’s VP of Brand Strategy and Creative Development(!) in an uninspiring recount of the campaign’s creation.
Sigh.
Just for a moment, I allowed myself to imagine a Super Bowl spot in which Reese’s was rolling out its new product innovation under its 50+ year old positioning of some things taste even better together.
Superior taste for the customer? Check.
Relatively differentiated from everyone else in the category? Check.
A long-running creative device that forms part of the brand’s distinctive assets? Hopefully check, I’m still not a creative in this scenario.
But I would bet a lifetime haul of Halloween candy that a creative team would have more fun and generate more ideas exploring ‘tastes even better together’ over the course of a decade than ‘we’re changing the recipe — oh no we aren’t haha’.
