Not Sorry! Reese’s Campaign Teardown

Hershey’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup is one of the most popular candy brands in America, so it’s safe to say that they’re authorities when it comes to the food and drink industry. However, it turns out that this famous candy brand has also mastered content marketing on social media. Noticing that consumers, and especially young consumers, were getting most of their media content from social platforms like YouTube and Instagram, Hersey’s expanded their strategic marketing practices to emphasize influencer marketing.

In fact, according to the Q3 2020 Social Intelligence report conducted by NeoReach, Reese’s was one of the top-spending brands on YouTube, putting much of their marketing spend towards influencer marketing. To put it in perspective, we’ll break down everything you need to know about Reese’s latest campaign.

Promoting Reese’s on Social Media

Recently, Reese’s has used social media as a powerful tool to support the launch of their new products. The brand utilizes Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and more to share eye-catching visuals, hilarious memes, recipes, and engaging videos to capture their audience’s attention for campaigns.

Reese’s has also been known to take advantage of trending hashtags and events on social media to optimize their platforms and interact more with their followers. Doing so has given Reese’s a consistent and friendly brand voice. Plus, Reese’s has also stated that social media allows them to listen to customer feedback for insight about their products and how to further develop their social media strategy.  

Top Spender

The data presented in NeoReach’s Q3 Report was collected from over 20,000,000 YouTube videos to analyze sponsored videos posted between July through September 2020. The data was also further refined to target videos of influencers located in North America, solely in the United States and Canada. A total of 1,775 brands were analyzed in the report and categorized into the top 19 industries with the highest influencer marketing spend on YouTube.

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Of the top 19 industries, the food and drink industry came out as #3. In total, these 19 industries spent $196M in IMV and gained a total of 1.3B total views across their content. They also had a total reach of 15.6B after sponsoring 8,893 videos. The top-spending industries of 2020 remained unchanged and had a reach more than doubling since Q2 at a 51% increase. These industries are:

• Tech
• Gaming
• Food and Drink

As a whole, the food and drink industry’s campaigns mainly focused on branding awareness and promoting limited-time offers. The calls-to-action for these campaigns were mainly instructing users to click a link in the influencer’s bio or leading them users to a direct purchase page. In terms of content, food and drink brands mainly like to sponsor integrated videos on YouTube. Reese’s was one of the top brands identified in the report, spending over $1M in Q3. Overall, the top 6 brands in the Q3 report invested over $50M in sponsored YouTube content alone. 

Want to use influencer sponsorships on other platforms? Read about using Instagram for lucrative sponsorships here.

In Q3, Reese’s sponsored 186 videos, activated four influencers, and gained 68.6M total views on YouTube. The total top 10 brand spending accounts reached nearly 6B – a massive increase from Q2. These 10 brands achieve a total spend of $65M on YouTube sponsored videos, proving that brands cannot deny the strong impact of influencer marketing on YouTube. At a collective 426.7M views across the top industries, sponsored videos show impressive returns for brands across multiple industries. 

Food and Drink brands spent a total of $25M on YouTube sponsored videos, racking up 10.4M engagements during Q3 from less than 1,000 videos with 177M views. Reese’s, in particular, gained impressive results from influencer marketing and was highlighted in the Q3 report as the top food and drink spender on YouTube. In the report, Reese’s beat out two-time champ Bang Energy as the highest spender in the food and drink industry in Q3. 

Standout Content and Influencers 

In the past, Reese’s has partnered with a large variety of YouTubers in order to reach wide audiences. For example, in one of their last campaigns, Reese’s mainly contracted ASMR influencers to participate in their campaign because of the video concept. This time, however, Reese’s partnered with gaming influencers. As the gaming industry continues to grow, especially on YouTube and Twitch, the decision to partner with entertaining gaming influencers to reach Generation Z was a fantastic strategy.

Read more about how the gaming industry utilizes influencer marketing for the most engagement here.

To encourage their viewers to check out Reese’s Take 5, sponsored influencers shared a unique link for their audiences to click on in their bio. This link led users to a landing page on Reese’s website that detailed the candy in-depth. As one of the highest-spending brands on YouTube, Reese’s reached out to well-known gaming influencers that they knew would produce content with the highest amount of views, reach, and IMV throughout the campaign. This method appeared to be highly successful, as influencers drew in millions of views on their sponsored videos. While there were only four influencers activated for the campaign, their content still drew in impressive numbers and engagement.

1. SypherPK: Sypher is an extremely popular YouTuber that makes pro-level gameplay videos. While he plays Fortnite mainly on his channel, his viewers can always expect to find pro-level tips and strategies on his channel and his other social media accounts.

2. Symfuhny: Mason Lanier, also known as Symfuhny, is an Esports personality, streamer, pro-player, and gaming content creator that has amassed a large following online. He’s best known for his Fortnite and Call of Duty videos.

3. Kripparrian: Octavian Morosan, better known by his online username Kripparrian, is a Romanian-Canadian Twitch streamer, YouTuber, and gaming personality. He’s very active on social media, posting two videos per day on YouTube.

4. aDrive: This YouTuber is a big name in the Pokémon community as a Pokémon Let’s Player and full-time Twitch streamer. On his channel, which is mainly focused on Pokémon, viewers can find engaging content such as playthrough videos and tutorials.

Final Results

Back before Reese’s launch, many publications reported that the Take 5’s comeback campaign would be centered around attracting Millennial and Gen Z shoppers. Through their YouTube strategies and overall marketing methods, this goal was achieved. With Reese’s sponsored videos, the brand achieved incredible metrics, such as a reach of 304B and 2.5M likes across the content.