Halloween meets GLP-1s: Hershey’s candy Super Bowl, with CEO Kirk Tanner

Context

Kirk Tanner is CEO of The Hershey Company, a year into the job after 32 years at PepsiCo. Host Bob Safian talks with him as Halloween, which Hershey calls its "Super Bowl", approaches. The talk covers how a 132-year-old brand stays culturally relevant, how GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are (and are not) changing snacking, and how AI now directs Hershey's sales force. It matters to PMs because it shows how a consumer-goods leader mixes daily metrics, face-to-face research and innovation to protect core brands.

The Big Idea

A big legacy brand has to keep earning cultural relevance. Tanner protects the core brands, innovates where growth is highest, and keeps learning from real consumers, not just reports.

He says "the second you're not culturally relevant with your brands like Hershey, then you should be worried". Everything else in the episode, from new products to AI-guided sales calls, serves that goal.

Key Insights

Relevance is a constant job

• What: Tanner says a brand that stops being culturally relevant is in trouble, even after 132 years.
• Example: he points to the Winter Olympics, where parent and child athlete moments showed culture moving, and says big brands must keep pace with it.
• Why it matters: heritage gives history and nostalgia, but it does not replace staying in tune with what people care about today.

Watch performance and sentiment daily

Retail shows Hershey its performance every day, including how transactions went. Separately, the team measures how people feel about the brands, which Tanner calls sentiment. He says you must keep having consumers "fall in love with you over and over and over again". Both signals together matter more than sales alone.

Match company speed to consumer speed

Tanner says the pace of consumer change is speeding up. His answer is to match the speed of the company to the speed of consumers and of the world. He names two tools that help:

• Consumer insights.
• Investment in R&D, so the innovation pipeline covers this year, next year and the year after.

Innovate from behavior people already show

• Reese's Oreo: the insight was that consumers were already combining these behaviors, so Hershey brought it to life. The intro to the show says it generated $100 million in its first five months.
• Hershey Krembar (Offagato flavor): a step into "accessible premium", where younger consumers are looking.
• Pattern: new products within existing brands, plus openings to build new brands.

GLP-1 users stay in the category

Tanner says research shows the category has been "very resilient" with GLP-1 users. They do not want to compromise on things they love, and he describes the drug as giving them a sense of control, "almost a bit of freedom". They enjoy less of each treat but do not leave. Hershey's response is choice and portion control, and over 30% of its portfolio is in portion control.

Premium grows small but fast

• Premium is still a small part of the category.
• It is growing three times faster than the category.
• Hershey is innovating there with Hershey Krembar, Cadbury and Brookside.

Empathy visits beat survey data

Hershey's team visits consumers' homes, including GLP-1 users. People show what is in their pantry and refrigerator and talk about daily habits, without knowing the visitor is from Hershey. Tanner says you learn real-time behavior, "not just survey results". Hearing the same thing directly from consumer after consumer "impacts you differently" than reading a research report. He also shops in stores on weekends, sometimes for two or three hours, asking shoppers why they buy and what is missing.

One Hershey at the customer

Supply chain was already run as one Hershey. Tanner extended it to how the company meets customers such as Walmart, Target, Costco, Sam's Club and 7-Eleven.

• Problem: separate leaders for salty, confection and functional businesses showing up separately.
• Fix: one team that brings the whole portfolio and is "a growth driver and easy to do business with".
• Payoff: the skilled confection sales force can now also sell the salty portfolio, which needed more attention. Data can also be gathered in one place.

AI routes the sales force

Tanner says AI tools have made the sales force much more efficient. Instead of choosing and spending time collecting data, reps get a ranked list of the biggest opportunities. His example: a route that says head to Target first, then Walmart, then Sam's Club, plus the activities to do on arrival in each store. He calls it "much more dynamic and opportunity-based".

Mental Models & Frameworks

Core health plus innovation

Tanner says he always returns to two things:

• Core brands: "you cannot have a leaky bucket with your core brands".
• Innovation: expand into the categories with the highest return of growth.

Sustainable long-term growth comes from the combination of both, not either alone. Use it as a check on any roadmap that leans too far toward new bets or toward defending the old.

Permissible snacking

In salty snacks, Hershey builds what Tanner calls "a business of permissible snacking". SkinnyPop, Dots pretzels and Lesser Evil are the brands he names. He ties it to where growth is in salty. Safian links it to a good-for-you versus fun-for-you split from Tanner's PepsiCo years. Tanner does not adopt that framing, but he does say these brands are what consumers want.

Trade-offs & Nuance

Trust ownership brings patience and pressure

• Upside: the Milton Hershey School trust is the largest shareholder and voting holder. Tanner says a committed, long-term partner is a powerful tool and beats facing an activist investor.
• Limit: he says he still worries about quarterly numbers, and the pressure is not necessarily less.
• Why performance still matters: the company wants to support the school and is in a daily competition for consumers, with a scorecard.

Listening to critics

Hershey faced criticism this year over recipe changes in some Reese's products, including from Brad Reese, grandson of the brand's founder. Tanner's reply was short: "there's always critics". He says the key is to listen to consumers and stay engaged, and that Reese's is expanding to the UK, Mexico and Brazil. He does not address the recipe complaint in detail.

Practical Application

Add empathy visits to discovery

• Do: visit a small set of real customers where they use or store your product, and let them show their habits.
• Then: keep the visit informal so it captures behavior, not opinions.
• Why it works: Tanner says hearing it face to face hits differently than a research report.

Track sentiment beside sales

Pick one measure of how customers feel about your product and review it next to your daily usage or sales numbers. Tanner watches both, and says performance data alone does not show whether people are still falling in love with the brand.

Mine existing behavior for new ideas

Before starting an idea from scratch, list what your users already do by combining products or features on their own. The Reese's Oreo launch came from noticing that consumers were already doing this. Then ship the version they are improvising.

Rank opportunities for your field team

If your sales or success team spends time deciding where to go, build a ranked daily list with the top opportunity first and suggested actions for each stop. This is Hershey's AI approach, and it removes data collection from reps' day.

Questions to Consider

• Which of our products are customers already combining or hacking in ways we have not built for, the way shoppers were already pairing Reese's and Oreo?
• When did our team last hear a customer describe their habits in person, instead of reading a survey result about them?
• If a new trend (like GLP-1 drugs for snacking) changed how much customers consume, would our data show that they leave, or only that they use less?
• Where do our company's separate business units meet the same customer separately, and would showing up as one team make us easier to work with?

Bottom Line

A legacy brand lasts by staying culturally relevant: protect the core, innovate where growth is highest, and learn from real customers up close. Tanner pairs daily sentiment and sales data with home visits and AI-guided sales routes to keep a 132-year-old company moving at the speed of its consumers.

Tools & Products

People to Follow

Kirk Tanner

CEO of The Hershey Company and its ninth CEO in history. He spent 32 years at PepsiCo before joining Hershey.

Bob Safian

Host of Rapid Response. He interviews business leaders on how they handle change and decisions.

Notable Quotes

"The second you're not culturally relevant with your brands like Hershey, then you should be worried." (Kirk Tanner)

"You cannot have a leaky bucket with your core brands." (Kirk Tanner)

"When you hear it directly over and over again from a consumer, it impacts you differently." (Kirk Tanner)