Observed Signal · Jan 21, 2026 · Brand Update · Source: AdExchanger · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Hershey’s Refreshes Brand, Reconsiders Paid/Earned/Owned Media
The Hershey Company is launching its first major Hershey’s brand campaign since 2018 and has overhauled its creative and communications platform. Vinny Rinaldi, VP of consumer connection, told AdExchanger the refresh aligns with a crowded 2026 marketing calendar — including a U.S. Olympic team sponsorship, a co-produced feature film titled “Hershey,” and the U.S. 250th anniversary — and reflects a shift toward more interconnected owned, earned and paid media. Per The Wall Street Journal, Hershey is increasing its Hershey’s brand budget by 20% in 2026; the company spent $600 million on marketing in 2024 across its portfolio. Hershey plans to expand retail media, deploy Olympic merchandising in owned locations, and apply its decade-refined media-mix model to measure sponsorship and cinematic promotion impact.
A major consumer brand is increasing its marketing budget (20%) and launching a significant campaign with high-profile partnerships (Olympics, theatrical film) that will drive incremental demand across CTV, retail media and sponsorship inventory — relevant to media buyers and publishers but not industry-shifting.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Hershey is launching its first major Hershey’s brand marketing campaign since 2018.
- The Hershey Company is upping its Hershey’s brand budget by 20% in 2026 (reported by The Wall Street Journal).
- Hershey spent $600 million on marketing in total in 2024 (including other Hershey-owned brands).
- Vinny Rinaldi, VP of consumer connection at Hershey, confirmed the brand refresh and discussed converging owned, earned and paid media.
- Hershey is a 2026 U.S. Olympic team sponsor, is co-producing a film titled “Hershey,” and will use owned retail locations and theme-park properties in Olympic merchandising and communications.
Connected Companies & Entities
2 Entities mappedRelated Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Hershey Says It Should Own AI Agents and Modernize MMM
Hershey’s VP of media and marketing technology, Vinny Rinaldi, describes how the company built a system of AI agents to accelerate media mix modeling (MMM) and speed measurement from months to weeks. Hershey has worked with vendors including Mutinex, Tracer.tech and Chalice, and has integrated those capabilities into its bidding ecosystem across The Trade Desk, YouTube and Meta. The approach prioritizes “relevance over reach,” influenced Hershey to increase investment in Reddit for Reese’s, and will inform the company’s TV upfront strategy. Rinaldi says Hershey should own agentic planning assets because they are fueled by the brand’s sales and first‑party data, and he emphasizes the importance of building a solid infrastructure foundation and keeping human critical thinking in the loop.
Hershey Runs Roku-to-Instacart CTV Proof‑of‑Concept
Hershey publicly documented a closed-loop CTV-to-commerce proof of concept that tied a Reese’s interactive Roku ad to Instacart as the purchase endpoint. The Roku campaign delivered a verified 4x return on ad spend and 84% of users who showed purchase consideration were new-to-brand buyers. Hershey also rebuilt its marketing-mix-modeling infrastructure with Mutinex and Tracer to run monthly (upgrading from quarterly reads), allowing $2 billion of media and trade spend to be re-evaluated twelve times per year. VP of Consumer Connections Vinny Rinaldi framed the effort as an architecture play: brands should own clean data, auditable identity, and measurement before handing control to agentic AI layers. The case study signals a CPG example of streaming moving from awareness to verifiable commerce outcomes and highlights the operational value of owning the full activation, measurement, and budget-reallocation stack.
AI Price War: OpenAI Gains Ground on Anthropic
The AI price war is intensifying, with OpenAI gaining significant ground on Anthropic among business customers. According to a Wall Street Journal report, spending on OpenAI and Anthropic models via the OpenRouter platform was nearly evenly split in September among roughly 120,000 companies using both, a shift from January when Anthropic held about 75% of that spending. OpenAI's aggressive price cuts on its GPT-5.6 lineup, including an 80% reduction on its smallest model Luna and 20% on Terra, are driving this change. Companies are increasingly prioritizing cost, combining multiple providers and using cheaper models for simpler tasks. Anthropic faces its own challenges, including capacity issues with Claude Code and data retention criticism. Both companies are preparing for IPOs, needing to demonstrate sustainable revenue to justify valuations exceeding $1 trillion.
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