For many, the combination of chocolate and peanut butter is an engaging experience unlike any other. For Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and ESPN, their new partnership on the New College Football Initiative is a multi-year deal that aims to provide the “perfect” experience in college football.
Brand loyalty and customer engagement are intricately involved in the Reese’s brand and in college football across the country. The Reese’s brand is an official sponsor of the new College Football Playoff (CFP), official sponsor of ESPN College GameDay Built by the Home Depot, and proud sponsor of ESPN College Football.
The Reese’s brand will also bring the experience of perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter right to college football fans with on-site activation at the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship in Arlington, Texas, on Jan. 12, 2015.
Anna Lingeris, Senior Manager of Brand Public Relations and Consumer Engagement, The Hershey Company participated in a Q&A with Loyalty360 to discuss the new partnership.
What factors drew Reese’s/The Hershey Company to ESPN and your partnership regarding the College Football Initiative, and how do you think it will heighten customer/brand engagement/experience?
ESPN and its college football properties provide great scale across broadcast, digital, etc. to reach Reese’s target consumers, and our new partnership with ESPN provides relevant and broadly appealing intellectual property that we can leverage nationally through consumer and retail promotions. In particular, we are proud to join college football fans in their celebration of a new era in college football with the inaugural College Football Playoff, and our association with College GameDay will help us to reinforce to consumers how Reese’s brand can enhance their game day traditions from the couch to the kitchen to the parking lot.
College football fans are as passionate about their sport as Reese’s consumers are about our peanut butter cups. The Reese’s brand loves the excitement and emotion that college football fans show every Saturday and wants to help make college football game days even greater with our perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter. We are thrilled to kick-off the partnership with our first activation at the College Football Playoff.
What makes college football attractive to The Hershey Company?
This new partnership with ESPN and the College Football Playoff further affirms Reese’s commitment to intercollegiate athletics, student athletes and college sports fans. The Reese’s brand is currently an official Corporate Partner of the NCAA and title sponsor of the NABC’s Reese’s® College All-Star Game and Reese’s Senior Bowl, the nation’s premier all-star games for top college seniors in basketball and football, respectively.
What does Customer Experience mean to The Hershey Company?
Having a strong relationship with our customers, shoppers, and consumers is critical and incredibly important to The Hershey Company. In addition to making products that people love, we also strive to create and deliver unique experiences that resonate with our customers, shoppers, and consumers alike.
How do you define customer loyalty and has that definition changed or evolved at all in recent years?
For us, customer loyalty is often defined by a level of passion that we see from consumers for our brands. Reese’s is a good example of this. Many of the Reese’s fans out there will tell you in no uncertain terms how much they adore the brand. In terms of the evolution of customer loyalty, with the prevalence of social media we have the opportunity to see this passion play itself out in real time. For example, we recently launched Reese’s Spreads and the chatter on
social media was emphatically positive.
The Reese’s brand currently serves as the official candy partner of the NCAA®, host of Reese’s Final Four Friday and title sponsor of the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Reese’s College All-Star Game, which features the top Division I senior basketball student-athletes from around the country which is played the weekend of the NCAA Men’s Final Four®.
ESPN will have exclusive coverage of the College Football Playoff beginning with the 2014-2015 season featuring the four top teams as selected by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee. The Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual and the Allstate Sugar Bowl will host the first Playoff Semifinals, which will pit No. 1 versus No. 4 and No. 2 versus No. 3 on Jan. 1, 2015. The winners of those two games will face off in the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Jan. 12, 2015.