Hershey’s announced the launch of Hershey’s Creme Bars on 1 September 2026, in two varieties, Salted Caramel and Affogato, alongside a campaign partnership with global girl group KATSEYE.
The bars are milk chocolate with creme fillings. Salted Caramel pairs caramel with a creamy bite. Affogato uses a dual-layer filling of espresso-flavoured caramel and vanilla creme. Both come in a 2.2 oz bar and an 8.4 oz snack-size pouch, available now at participating retailers.
The gesture is the campaign
The creative is built on KATSEYE’s “Pinky Up” gesture, which Hershey’s describes as a playful expression of choosing happiness for yourself. The campaign spot reframes choosing a chocolate bar as an act of self-expression, and the film work is credited to agency MARTIN.
“We’ve teamed up with Hershey’s to always find joy in the little moments, whether we’re traveling, rehearsing, or spending time together,” KATSEYE said in the announcement.
The partnership lands on the back of the group’s own momentum. Their single “Pinky Up” was released on 9 April 2026, a day before their Coachella performance, and the “Wild” EP followed on 14 August 2026.
The platform and the rollout
Creme Bars sit under Hershey’s “It’s Your Happy Place” brand platform. The launch is not a single film.
Sampling and pop-up experiences are planned for later in the autumn. Hershey’s is also partnering with Uber around selected cultural moments to reach consumers while they are out and moving between plans.
Trade coverage in Variety reports the campaign will run across national TV, streaming video, streaming audio, digital and social, plus murals in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
Speaking to Variety, Hershey’s marketing executive Vinny Taffet framed the target behaviour as “selective splurging,” describing younger consumers as intentional with their money and willing to spend when something feels special relative to the alternatives.
Why the spend is there
The campaign arrives during a deliberate investment cycle. Hershey reported second-quarter 2026 consolidated net sales of $2,787.3 million, up 6.6%, with organic constant-currency net sales up 3.6%.
On the earnings call, management guided to a 30% year-over-year increase in brand investment supporting both 2026 and 2027, plus a 30% increase in new innovation items versus the first half, naming Hershey’s Creme Filled Bars as one of the large national-scale launches.
The Engage Positive view
This is a licensing deal that behaves like a product feature. That distinction is where the lesson sits.
1. Pick the asset with a physical action attached Most music partnerships buy a face and a track. This one bought a gesture. A hand motion is repeatable by a consumer at zero cost, which turns a paid asset into a participation prompt.
2. Build the OOH to be re-shot by the audience Murals in Brooklyn and Los Angeles are not reach buys at that scale. They are backdrops engineered so people photograph themselves doing the gesture, converting a fixed-cost placement into an earned-media surface.
3. Match the product truth to the spend trigger Two flavour-forward SKUs at bar prices is an accessible-premium play. The campaign message about small self-expressive choices and the product price point are saying the same thing, which is rarer than it should be.
4. Sequence the launch, do not spike it Film first, then sampling and pop-ups in autumn, then a delivery partnership around cultural moments. Each phase gives the next one something to reference, instead of one flight of media doing all the work.
Our honest counterpoint Gesture-led campaigns are easy to admire and hard to measure. If the mural, the Uber activation and the social layer all drive branded search and retail takeaway rather than clickable traffic, the measurement plan has to be built on incrementality testing and retail data, not last-click. Brands copying this format without that plan will get a fun campaign and no defensible read on what it returned.
