Hershey

Marketing spend by year

Bars: advertising and marketing expense, $B (10-K). Line: spend as a share of revenue. Years where the filing's revenue line isn't comparable are left out of the line.

What they told investors

“The expectation for the full year is unchanged, still expect to see double-digit increase in marketing and advertising.”management · 2026 Q1 · transcript

“We put the demand creation together with the marketing -- and then what we do is we bring that to life like we've never done before at the 4th of July, and we've activated that with our sales force.”Kirk Tanner · 2026 Q1 · transcript

“we'd expect to see our brand investment up double digits across the quarters”Kirk Tanner · 2025 Q4 · transcript

“we're really focused on fueling demand creation through things like scaling some investments in R&D and innovation, brand building, reap the retail sales team and the technology around that”management · 2025 Q4 · transcript

“It is a balance of delivering pull and push.”management · 2025 Q4 · transcript

“we're gonna continue to leverage nonworking media to support new brands and occasions as well.”Kirk Tanner · 2025 Q4 · transcript

What the 10-K says about marketing

• investing in brand “tained in connection with these acquisitions, achievement of these synergies will be driven by our ability to successfully leverage Hershey’s resources, expertise, capability-building, distribution locations and customer base. If we are unable to successfully couple Hershey’s…” 10-K, Feb 17, 2026
• investing in brand “Goodwill was determined as the excess of the purchase price over the fair value of the net assets acquired (including the identifiable intangible assets). The goodwill derived from this acquisition is not expected to be deductible for tax purposes and reflects the value of…” 10-K, Feb 17, 2026

Say vs do

Receipts say brand/spend down. In 90 statements from its leaders in interviews, 5 argued for investing in brand and 1 for cutting; the filed spend went down.

Peers