Advertising: Hershey Sees a Need

The chocolate company that Milton S. Hershey founded 61 years ago is the only major U.S. corporation that does not advertise. It got into the business on the ground floor, rode up through the years, prospered so well that its sales in 1963 reached $203 million. At no time have Hershey executives claimed to be dogmatic about advertising. "We've never been against it," says one. "We've always said it was a tool we would use when the need arose." Last week the need seemed to have arisen.

Cranking up a $7,000,000 plant in Smiths Falls, Ont., to serve the Canadian market, Hershey took a look at the entrenched competition—Fry-Cadbury, Neilson, Rowntree and Lowney—and hired Manhattan's BBDO to create a Canada-wide Hershey campaign. Did Canadian advertising mean a weather change in the U.S.? "When, as and if we think we need advertising here at home," said a Hershey man archly, "we'll turn to it."