The Hershey Co. is using food packaging to encourage chocolate lovers to share their candy bars, with the launch of the limited-edition Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Emoji Bar. The product’s packaging design features oversized emojis, and the chocolate bars are stamped with emojis.
The limited edition will launch nationwide in early July 2019 and will be available through the back-to-school season. It will include both the standard 1.55-oz Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar and snack-size Hershey’s bars.
The graphic design for the six limited-edition wrappers features emojis, rendered in vibrant yellow, hot pink and brown, plus product photography on a yellow background. The design marks the brand’s first departure from its standard brown and gray wrappers.
“Our intent was for the packaging graphics to stand out on-shelf and differentiate us versus the everyday Hershey packaging. The yellow color also helps us quickly communicate emojis as the new theme,” says Teal Liu, manager of partnership and occasion marketing at Hershey.
The six emojis on the wrappers include Winking Face, Smiling Face with Heart Eyes, Smiling Face with Tears of Joy and Smiling Face with Sunglasses. Each pip on the chocolate bar is marked with one of 25 emojis, which include Thumbs Up, Fist Bump and several of the same emojis used on the packaging.
“We wanted to give kids the opportunity to share the bars with their friends, based on their sentiment, as well as to promote collectability of the new item,” Liu says. “We conducted both qualitative and quantitative research to validate the concept as well as confirm the top 25 ‘shareable’ emojis that both kids and parents liked best.”
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