Hershey India brings out special packaging to celebrate women achievers

Celebrating International Women’s Day, the brand took its ‘HERSHE’ campaign further this year by illustrating the women’s accomplishments on its packs and releasing a rap song.

As part of Women’s Day celebrations, Hershey India is recognising the accomplishments of six women achievers and custom illustrating them on the HERSHEY’s chocolate bars.

The Hershey Company’s award-winning <#HerSHE> campaign, which originated in Brazil in 2020, will be brought alive in India. In a bid to make the invisible woman visible, Hershey’s honours these women and their efforts towards choosing and succeeding in unconventional careers.

The campaign will be going live across seven international markets, through activations in India and around the world to continue to advance its gender equity commitments.

Herjit Bhalla, VP India and AEMEA, The Hershey Company said, “Diversity and Inclusion has always been at the crux of the Hershey ecosystem. It has been a key focus area for the organisation across countries, and the HERSHE campaign brings it all together beautifully for us. This campaign gives a voice to what The Hershey Company truly believes in. By elevating the role played by the sheroes around us we want to make the ‘invisible visible’ through this campaign. While we have featured six sheroes on our packs there are countless sheroes out there and the ones we come across in our daily lives. Their determination and grit make them truly extraordinary, and Hershey’s appreciates that.”

It has unveiled the campaign, through a power-packed celebratory rap song by American Indian Rapper Raja Kumari & Indian musician Meba Ofilia.

This year the brand is leveraging technology to create an online community for curating and showcasing inspiring stories by women and connecting to offline channels via QR code on the packaging. Consumers can scan the QR Code printed on the packaging of HERSHEY’S Bar that will link them to a microsite. The microsite has curated templates, with personalised messaging, that consumers can use to celebrate and share the stories of Sheroes who have inspired them.

Geetika Mehta, Managing Director, Hershey India said, “As a build up to the International Women’s Day, we have taken a unique voice of celebrating and highlighting HER & SHE, through the #HerShe campaign. The campaign strives to celebrate inspiring stories of Sheroes in our society, who have displayed excellence by either taking the path less travelled or by simply creating a positive impact on people around them. Our idea is to bring alive galvanizing stories by making the ‘invisible visible’!”

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As part of the campaign it has also launched an influencer marketing campaign featuring the rap song and asking people to join the #HerShe Movement.

Hershey India has joined forces ‘Sheroes’ such as Aishwarya Sridhar, Dhvani Kothari, Sandhya Rai, Rukmini Vijayakumar, Pooja Taparia, and Falguni Vasavda Ojha from diverse fields including Photography, Performing Arts, Social Work, Sports, and Feminism, and dedicated Hershey’s Bars packaging to feature, celebrate and showcase achievements of the Sheroes. To learn more about them, consumers can scan the code on the packs and read about them on the microsite.

Ankit Desai, Marketing Director, Hershey India said, “The HerShe campaign brings alive a unique perspective of ‘Invisible Visible’, in line with the brand purpose of ‘Celebrating Togetherness’. We have envisioned the ‘HER-SHE’ campaign with an intention to not only celebrate women leaders and achievers but also Sheroes all around us, be it family members, friends, mentors or colleagues. The initiative, which deserves to go to maximum people, leverages an Integrated Experiential approach, spanning packaging take-over of the entire Hershey’s Bar portfolio, personalized and interactive tech-based micro site, AR filters, first of its kind celebratory rap song and influencer outreach to drive education, engagement and thus celebration. Lastly, we intend to have fireside chats on IWD, to enable conversations around career journeys and many such encouraging stories.”

“As a company that embraces diversity and equality, we saw a unique insight into how we can make visible the role of forgotten or somewhat invisible women who make such an important difference in our society,” said Santhi Ramesh, CMO for Hershey International. “These campaigns celebrate women while communicating our brand values and the values we share with our consumers. The user generated content is real and authentic, and as a result is able to break through and resonate strongly with consumers.”

Further to this, the campaign will culminate with a mentorship session conducted with the six sheroes which will be further amplified by Girl Up.

Gender equity is a central focus of The Hershey Company’s diversity, equity and inclusion strategy. The company is led by a female CEO, Michele Buck, and was named the #1 World’s Top Female-Friendly Companies by Forbes in 2021. By 2025, Hershey aims to achieve aggregate dollar-for-dollar pay equity for salaried employees worldwide. The company currently reports 48% female representation globally and remains committed to achieving equal representation across its workforce.

Last year as well the brand had changed the wrappers of the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars to feature women who were making a difference.