Daily Insights

Marketing Madness

By: Alizah Asif Farooqi | Mar 23, 2021

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups treats its Twitter followers to a series of “salty conversations” that celebrate March Madness and its saltiest and sweetest product yet.

In a new digital effort to engage with its 338.8K Twitter followers, Reese’s serves up some salty and sweet smack talk to commemorate the highs and lows of March Madness, which began on March 18. At the core of the campaign is Reese’s pièce de résistance, Big Cups with Pretzels, which followers who retweet the company or use #SaltyReeses and #Sweepstakes have the chance to win—but only for ten minutes at a time. The candy company also added the word “Salty” ahead of its usual “Reese’s” Twitter handle—a simple, yet effective tweak given that the full name will now pop up in user searches for the brand, thereby promoting the new product even more. Reese’s brand manager Margo McIlvaine reflects, “In a year that has given us way too many reasons to be salty, the Reese’s brand is giving fans a voice to share their saltiness.” To start the campaign on a sweet note, Reese’s gave 1,200 consumers one pack of Reese’s Big Cups with Pretzels, and added that it might gift a few particularly salty college towns the treat too, as a way to sweeten any disappointment they may be feeling around the tournament.

Both famous and infamous for being one of the chattiest platforms around, Twitter is a natural pick for Reese’s new campaign, which leans into the traditions of sports talk. By tailoring its social media strategy to meet its audience where they are and match consumer trends, something leading brands in Gartner’s Digital IQ Index: Food & Beverages have prioritized in the past year, Reese’s can continue both guard and amplify its already animated digital voice and power forward into current trends. For example, gamifying the campaign via the ten minute turnaround times could encourage followers who are already interested in the March Madness games to play with friends. In addition to a need for activity, the pandemic has also lead consumers to crave comfort foods, so putting a product that’s chock-full of peanut butter, chocolate, and pretzels front and center of the campaign is a marketing slam dunk. Finally, Reese’s already boasts an engaging voice on Twitter. Adding basketball into the mix makes for a particularly smooth move as some basketball players have publicly professed their love for Reese’s, often with the knowledge that the brand would shoot back with a witty response or even better, a sweet surprise.

See more: Food , gamification , Social Media , twitter , Hershey Co , Reese's