The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup was both Canada’s top chocolate brand and an iconic product famous for its unique combination of chocolate and peanut butter. However, despite being Canada’s most loved confectionery brand for years, market share and sales growth had recently declined.

The pandemic accelerated this trend, as people switched up their usual buying and consumption habits. Consumers were making strange decisions and straying from the norm - making strange style choices, eating strange foods and getting their chocolate fix in strange new ways.

Chocolate lovers were in danger of drifting away from Reese’s and into the arms of competitors. Indeed, Reese’s closest competitor, KitKat, saw record growth of 7%, narrowing the share gap vs. Reese’s.

As fans’ attention wandered, Reese’s had to break through the COVID clutter and reclaim their rightful place as Canada’s iconic chocolate brand. Our goal was to defend Reese’s leadership position and reverse declines.

Our strategy was to hijack the confectionery conversation and elevate the #StickyCup vs. #CleanCup debate to epic proportions by leveraging our fans’ deep passions around the Reese’s eating ritual and engaging Canadians at a time when the world was looking for a little levity.

We set out to carefully harness the innate strengths of specific media to drive conversation and debate around the brand, engage consumers, smash norms, and accelerate sales beyond benchmarks.

Especially in this COVID environment of distraction and clutter, ‘new news’ was a critical confectionery category sales driver. We doubled down on this important lever to help lost chocolate consumers get excited about Reese’s again.

We also leveraged the iconic cup wrapper as a powerful driving visual mnemonic to allow us to promote Reese’s without actually showing the product! #StickyvsCleanCup imagery would be featured throughout the campaign to spark debate and put Reese’s back on consumers’ radar.

First, Reese’s launched a wordless, giant wrapper billboard activation in the heart of Canada’s biggest city. Launched without mentioning the brand and supported by TV, the activation generated huge buzz and top-of-mind awareness.

Next, to drive engagement, Reese's challenged fans to pick a side: Are you #TeamCleanCup or #TeamStickyCup?, inviting the chocolate-loving community and influencers to the debate and fueling the conversation through high-reach platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. Fan culture hit a high when a Reese’s/Lebron James meme started making the rounds.

Then, in a first-to-market TikTok innovation, Reese’s introduced Voting Stickers to help consumers declare their allegiance, using outrageous creator collaborations to amplify the story and drive participation.

Finally, to refresh the conversation and drive relevant reach online, we leveraged a brilliant precision-targeted video strategy using YouTube Director’s Mix to deliver over 200 unique messages, customized across 50 categories, prompting millions to join the debate.

The Reese’s campaign blew the doors off expectations and captured the hearts and attention of Canadian chocolate-lovers. Most importantly, it brought fans back into the Reese’s family, revived brand leadership and drove extraordinary business results:

Drove outstanding sales and share growth

- Sales showed 2X higher growth than category

- Dollar volume grew by 9.6%

- Share grew by 3.3% in a mature confectionary category–cementing Reese’s leadership position and delivering over a $30M gap vs. #2 player Kit-Kat

Boosted brand equity

- Brand preference grew by +2.5 points, surpassing CPG norms by 257%

- Brand favourability saw 1.8% lift, 125% above industry benchmark

Generated exceptional brand engagement

- Reese’s saw outstanding engagement 3.9X higher than norms, plus 31.5% lift in ad recall

Importantly, during the stress of a pandemic, Reese’s #StickyVsCleanCup campaign allowed Canadians to indulge in much-needed levity and escape, proving that sometimes friendly arguments can have sweet resolutions!