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

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

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Kirk Tanner (0:28)

The second you're not culturally relevant with your brands, like Hershey, then you should be worried. We've become much more efficient with AI tools, our Salesforce, choosing and deciding. All that's done for them so that it says, hey, Kirk, you've got to head to target 7575 That's your biggest opportunity today. Your next stop, Walmart. Your next stop, Sam's Club.

And then it gives me those activities when I walk in the store of how I build the business. It's much more dynamic and opportunity based.

Bob Safian (1:09)

That's Kirk Tanner, CEO of the Hershey Company. As we roll toward Halloween, I wanted to talk to Kirk about how a business can optimize a big moment in today's crowded marketplace, including whether a new Hershey movie will provide Barbie-like attention. We also talk about the impact of Glp-1s on the candy business, how AI is impacting retail, and the lessons he's applying from his leadership years at PepsiCo.

So, let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

Hi, Bob Safian here with something special at the top of today's episode. Eli Wallen, founder and CEO of Enjin. Rapid Response is brought to you with support from Enjin. Eli, excited to learn more about you and Enjin.

Eli Wallen (2:00)

Thanks so much for having me, Bob.

Bob Safian (2:02)

So, what is the value of business travel?

Eli Wallen (2:05)

For every dollar spent on travel in the SMB space, there's $12 revenue associated with it.

There's so much ROI, especially in a world that our internal employees aren't coming together every single day. The amount of value that you start to leak, whether it's focus, prioritization, relationships, motivation, building culture. So, I'd say for a remote first or remote centric organization, travel and getting your teams together is insanely important.

Bob Safian (2:32)

Finance folks will often look at travel as something to cut when budgets tighten, right? So, what do you say to a skeptical CFO when they're raising that kind of idea?

Eli Wallen (2:45)

If you're talking about internal travel, bring your teams together, look at the survey data, look at the data of the people that are getting together more often, look at the productivity and the results. It's significant, it's there. You can get so much done on a challenging problem with a team together, then you can try to accomplish that over Zoom. For the corporate side, 64% of C-Suite say they would lose customers if they did not travel and see them regularly. And so there's data on both sides of internal and external travel that is just simply irreplaceable.

Bob Safian (3:17)

You close more deals, you have better relationships when you get to see people face to face.

Eli Wallen (3:21)

That's right, people buy from people that they trust, that they've shaken their hand and understand a face to a name. When people aren't coming together in the office every day, that was travel. We're traveling five days a week to see each other, and now they're not. And it's very important to bring some of that back.

Bob Safian (3:38)

Well, Eli, this has been great. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Eli Wallen (3:42)

Thanks, Bob. It was a pleasure.

Bob Safian (3:43)

And now, on to the show. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Kirk Tanner, CEO of the Hershey Company. Kirk, welcome to the show.

Kirk Tanner (3:55)

Hey, thanks a lot, Bob. Appreciate you having me on.

Bob Safian (3:59)

I'm gonna try to refrain from making too many bad sweet jokes. I know you must get them all the time. But I do love chocolate. This year's been uncommon in the number of news stories I've seen about the price of chocolate.

Why is that?

Kirk Tanner (4:15)

Yeah, so there's been a lot of inflationary pressure on cocoa for the last couple of years. And the price of cocoa kind of reached some unprecedented levels.

And so that's the main driver. Now, we've seen stability in the cocoa markets come down a little bit. It's still well above the historic norm. But that's the primary inflationary pressure that the industry has seen over the last couple years.

Bob Safian (4:44)

I mean, some folks talk about chocolate as an affordable luxury, which I guess inflation makes a little bit more difficult. But is that how you look at the candy business? I mean, it's not health food, unfortunately.