Hersheys' IWD campaign featuring transwoman leads to backlash

The Hershey Company’s latest International Women’s Day campaign has received backlash for featuring a transwomen on its SHE chocolate bars. However, Hershey has decided to stand by its collaboration, according to media reports. There is currently #BoycottHersheys going on Twitter, and there are mixed responses to the campaign such as “we want chocolate, not leftist propaganda” and “you don’t understand that #TransWomenAreWomen”.

Hershey released an ad that featured queer and feminist activist, Fae Johnstone, in its campaign along with five Canadian women who were featured on the exclusive chocolate bars, including Johnstone, quoted on Bloomberg. The other women in the ad worked on matters surrounding gender equality, indigenous rights and climate change. A quick check by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Johnstone’s account has been set to private and her Tweets cannot be accessed. 

On Twitter, some users said Johnstone had a "smug look” and others commented on the day being for women. But jumping in to defend, some Twitter users thought that women are being represented fairly and said #TransWomenAreWomen.

Don't miss: Shopee PH's new brand ambassador leads to boycott, Lazada milks outpour of love

Hershey said in a statement to CNN that Hershey value togetherness and recognise the strength created by diversity. “Over the past three years, our Women’s History Month programming has been an inclusive celebration of women and their impact. We appreciate the countless people and meaningful partnerships behind these efforts.”

According to Bloomberg, Johnstone said on Twitter that she didn’t grow up with a lot of transwoman and her reason for being part of the campaign is to underscore that women have come a “long way to go in the fight to end misogyny, patriarchy and gender-based violence”.

For the past week, starting from 2 March, there is a 1010% increase in total engagement (125,000 engagements) of this subject matter, statistics given to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE by Meltwater. The total engagement includes total amount of likes, retweets, etc. and the percentage change compared to the previous period. There are over 2,000 mentions per day the past week.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out for a statement. 

Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time the brand’s IWD faced controversy. Last year the brand decided to highlight the words "SHE" at the centre of the iconic milk chocolate bar as part of Women's History Month celebrations in its #CelebrateSHE campaign. While the bars won praise from many consumers and influencers in the Twitterverse, an interesting thread that emerged was the grammatical inaccuracy and the pondering of why Hershey’s didn’t just use the word “HER” which at the start of the brand name.

While some have said the use of "her" would have had more grammatical accuracy and would still have gotten the point across, others have tried to come to the brand's rescue saying that having "she" in a different colour makes "her" stand out and so the brand did it in a way emphasise the object pronoun. 

Closer to home in Asia, another brand that recently took a hit for its ambassador was Shopee, after netizens called out the brand for taking on board actress and singer Toni Gonzaga as its new brand ambassador. The brand was called out spending money on a brand ambassador amidst mass culling of job and using a controversial figure  as the face of its brand. Gonzaga became a controversial figure in Philippines for supporting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte in the 2022 elections. She also held several controversial interviews with the political figures.

Related articles: 

Why SHE and not HER? Hershey's IWD packaging raises grammar questions
ETUDE House MY partners Hershey's for chocolate-inspired makeup collection
Hershey's switches up iconic packaging with emoji additions