Reese’s leans in to election-year politics
The Media Plan
It can be tricky to advertise around an election year. Indeed, many brands tend to stay away from politics for fear of brand safety.
But for Reese’s, the chocolate brand that’s part of Hershey, this year’s general election is an opportunity to stand out.
“Having entered the UK market in 2003, Reese’s are the ultimate challenger brand, going up against UK favourites of Cadbury, Mars, Nestlé and Kinder,” said UM comms manager Jemma Peterson.
“Playing on 2024 as an election year, the team at Mother came up with the ‘Egg-lection’ campaign concept, ‘egg-lecting’ Reese’s as the crème egg of choice this Easter,” she continued.
The campaign thus aimed to advertise around key political UK landmarks, including the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall.
However, given the relative dearth of OOH inventory directly adjacent to London’s political landmarks, UM had to deliver a workaround.
Partnering with mobile outdoor advertising company Mobile Media Group and specialist OOH agency Rapport, Reese’s built a “first-to-market fully wrapped Ad Van with voiceover” that convoyed around central London.
The idea, according to Peterson, was to appeal to Londoners to “elect Reese’s peanut butter-filled crème egg as the superior crème-filled egg”.
Additional locations were “cherry-picked” in Shoreditch and Brixton in high-footfall areas to drive appeal for the younger adult target demographic.
The van creative was coupled with campaign-style flyposting and digital six-sheets scattered around the capital, as well as amplification of the “Egg-lection” content on Reese’s social media channels via both organic and paid strategies.
The outdoor work also ran in parallel to Reese’s “more standard” Easter campaign, which featured ads across linear TV, YouTube and social media.
As Peterson explained: “We prioritised high-impact formats to drive awareness and talkability of the campaign.”
UM measured the campaign’s success using an OOH uplift study, which showed “uplift across all key metrics”, Peterson said.