How Hershey Is Using AI to Future-Proof Its Marketing Model

Why It Matters

By shifting to AI‑driven relevance, Hershey can boost marketing ROI and gain real‑time insight across its portfolio, a competitive edge in the crowded CPG landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Hershey spent a year building AI marketing measurement system.
• Trained on three years of sales and marketing data.
• Enables monthly marketing mix updates versus three annual revisions.
• Aggregates social, search and streaming data automatically, cutting manual months.
• Shifts focus from sheer reach to audience relevance and ROI.

Pulse Analysis

Hershey’s new AI‑driven marketing platform marks a decisive shift for one of the world’s largest chocolate makers. After nearly a year of development, the system is designed to cut through the clutter of today’s multi‑channel advertising environment, where consumers encounter ads on social feeds, streaming services, search engines and beyond. By moving away from a pure reach‑centric model, Hershey aims to serve ads that are genuinely relevant to specific consumer segments. This mirrors a broader industry realization that relevance, not just exposure, drives brand loyalty and long‑term growth.

The platform was trained on three years of Hershey’s sales and marketing data, allowing it to benchmark performance against up‑to‑date market conditions. It automatically pulls and standardises information from social media, search, streaming and other channels—a task that previously required months of manual effort. The AI engine now delivers monthly marketing‑mix insights, replacing the legacy practice of updating the model only three times per year. Executives can therefore reallocate spend in near real‑time, improve return on ad spend, and monitor the effectiveness of every brand in the portfolio rather than a handful of flagship products.

Hershey joins peers such as Mondelēz, Unilever and Nestlé, all of which are pouring capital into AI to tighten data ownership and accelerate decision cycles. For consumer‑packaged goods firms, the ability to evaluate campaigns across dozens of brands in real time can translate into measurable cost savings and stronger market share gains. Moreover, the shift toward AI‑enabled relevance signals a broader transformation in advertising spend, where technology augments human creativity rather than replaces it. As the platform rolls out in May, Hershey’s experience will likely become a benchmark for AI adoption across the food‑and‑beverage sector.