Hershey's Jessica DuQuesne & Flywheel's Allyson Gill - Building a Winning Global Omnichannel "Scream for Reese's" Campaign

Jessica DuQuesne (00:00)

Hi everyone,I am Jessica DuQuesne with the Hershey Company.

Ally Gill (00:03)

Hi, I'm Allie Gill from Flywheel and you're watching the CPG Guys podcast.

PVSB (00:08)

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys podcast. I am your enigmatic co-host, PVSB, who also moonlights as head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the Commerce Acceleration Division of Omnicom. My co-host, he is the co-founder of ThinkBlue Consulting, the father of global pop stars Rhea Raj and Katseye's Lara Raj. Their fans, of course, call him Papa Raj, but to me, he's my BFF, Sri. Sri is on vacation at

undisclosed location with his family and can't join us for today's conversation. hope he is enjoying some quiet time, but I know that family very well. I doubt that there's anything quiet going

Jessica DuQuesne (00:43)

Ha ha

PVSB (00:44)

on that started with one of them losing their luggage on the way. So hopefully it's a little better than that, but I know they're enjoying themselves. Sri, you're greatly missed today. To our audience, if you're getting value from these conversations we have a couple of times a week, we have three quick asks first.

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actions help us bring you more of the conversations that matter. Now on to our episode today. Halloween used to be a distinctly American obsession, but that's changing very fast and no candy brand is riding that wave harder than Reese's. Today we're digging into Scream for Reese's, Hershey's first ever international Halloween marketing push, which paired the world's number one peanut butter cup with one of horror's most iconic franchises.

to build buzz ahead of Scream 7's February 2026 theatrical release. This wasn't a one market test. We're talking activations across numerous countries, the UK, Germany, Austria, Mexico, Puerto Rico, everything from a fully ghost-facified OXXO flagship store in Mexico to university and mall takeovers, private screamings of the film. I love that,

Jessica DuQuesne (02:52)

Mm-hmm.

PVSB (02:52)

private screamings.

And in-store sampling across nearly 100 retail locations. It is a excellent masterclass in taking a US-rooted cultural moment and giving it global retail muscle. And we have fortunately got two of the people who actually built it in the virtual room with us today. First, Jessica DuQuesne, brand manager of international commercial growth at the Hershey Company, the strategic mind behind bringing Reese's Halloween equity to markets.

where the holiday is still finding its footing in joining her, my colleague, Allyson Gill from Flywheel, the retail marketing agency that turned that strategy into real world on the ground execution across five very different retail landscapes. Together, they're going to walk us through how this campaign came together, the strategic thinking, the in-market execution challenges, what worked, what surprised them, and what it means for how global CPG brands think about.

Seasonal

moments going forward Jessica Ally. Welcome to the show. How you doing?

Jessica DuQuesne (03:53)

Doing

great. Thank you so much for inviting us. Very exciting to talk about our campaign, Scream for Recess. We're very proud of it.

Ally Gill (04:00)

Yes, thanks

so much for having us. Looking forward to talking through it.

PVSB (04:04)

I am looking forward to it. Before we get to that, let's start with Jessica. Why don't you just briefly describe what it is you do at Hershey.

Jessica DuQuesne (04:09)

Well,

I've been at Hershey around eight years and I started on the sales support side, like customer marketing, shopper marketing, omnichannel marketing, supporting our largest customers, Walmart, Sam's Club BJ's and Costco. And then I moved into the brand marketing side on the international

place where where I'm now, right? International marketing, which is supporting all markets ex- US. So it's almost like the center. And I work with a very

close team that to support regional activations as well as looking at something programming that can be executed across all regions. Right. So I specifically focus on partnerships as well as the Hershey brand and its growth. So I am, you know, it's a very exciting time because we are growing international. Our brands are growing and bringing all the regions together and thinking strategically about how they show up in different markets.

is very exciting. So that's a little about me.

PVSB (05:09)

Thank you, Jessica. Ally, over to you.

Ally Gill (05:12)

Thank you. Yeah. So I work with Flywheel in the capacity of business leadership and I work with our

Clients specifically, I work with Hershey. I've been working with Hershey for a long time, over about 15 years now, and work with their omnichannel teams as well as their national teams to develop national brand promotions, including partnership strategy and activation. And so I've worked with Jessica in a few capacities. We work with the customer and omnichannel teams at Hershey to develop omnichannel programming. We also work with Jessica in her role.

obviously in her brand marketing role in international to help her with partnership activation. So it's been a really great partnership over the course of time. Jessica's been at Hershey.

PVSB (05:55)

Thank

you, Ally, that's great. Well, I can't think of two better people to have with me today to walk us through Scream for Reese's campaign and everything that comprised it. It's gonna be a good conversation to our audience in the digital line of notes this episode. As you know, we always have links. There are links to both Jessica and Ali's LinkedIn profiles and their company websites so you can multitask, learn a little bit more about them as you.

Listen to our conversation go on. So let's get down to it. I'm going to open up. I'm going to talk this one for Jessica. The Scream for Reese's campaign was described as Hershey's first partnership of this kind. What was the internal case that you had to make to greenlight something so really unprecedented pairing a candy brand with an R rated horror franchise? And how did you overcome the skeptics that I'm sure started to emerge when this idea surfaced?

Jessica DuQuesne (06:46)

so we didn't start with Scream. We started with the business challenge. So we knew Recess already had a strong association with Halloween in the US, but that internationally the behavior did not exist yet. So the question became how do we make Reese's feel naturally connected to Halloween outside the US and as

How do we grow the Halloween season outside the US? How do we grow together? So once we defined that behavior that we wanted to create, we knew that entertainment could be a powerful accelerator. So we brought Flywheel early on to work

with us to define how that would come to life. And so, as part of the evaluation, we looked at our shopper. So, our consumer, our shopper, actually internationally had something in common. They all like, but it's very different in the US. And the US is trick-or-treating, family, Halloween, you know how it is. Over there in the other parts of the world, it's about horror, horror fests, scary movies, parties, costumes. So it had a different again, that was

It's

synonymous of like that in every country that we looked outside the US. And so once we had that insight, plus we knew that entertainment was also a piece in, Scream kept coming up.

not

to the top as one of the few entertainment franchises that is immediately associated with Halloween across multiple markets. So that made it culturally relevant and also globally relevant. it allowed markets to execute locally. And I think that because we had that insight, that helped us break through any skeptics or anybody that would push back that would think that, you know, like maybe horror was not a right, you know, fit, but it was because of our consumer and it really

That's how it resonated.

PVSB (08:31)

What a fascinating observation that as someone who grew up in Canada and the United States, it's always been to me a youth oriented holiday, but to recognize that outside of this country where it hadn't not been part of the cultural zeitgeist for years, it developed more as an adult kind of an event. And the thrill and the theme of it being more adult and that allowed you to pivot towards

a complimentary brand equity that more fit that adult audience. That's fascinating. You know, the explicit goal was to establish, as I understand, Reese's as the quintessential Halloween treat in these important international markets where the US approach to Halloween, that culture is still kind of emerging. How do you localize a Halloween campaign for markets where the holiday

doesn't have the same roots and what does success look like from country to country when you're not playing the same playbook that you would play in the United States.

Jessica DuQuesne (09:31)

Yeah,

I I love this question because it really is different from market to market, right? we learned so much from this whole process. I mean, we knew the consumer insights, we understood that in every market Halloween was an evolving season. We also understood that in every country this the season is very connected to an American season. So we knew there was that desire to grow, to

Learn

to participate. And with every country we saw, for example, with the UK, we saw that the experiential PR events were the ones that attracted the most engagement with consumers and retailers had the most passion for. In Mexico, we saw that bringing Scream to the store, into consumers in the store, was the most exciting part for consumers. Like in Australia, social platforms were giving us the most with Scream, and everybody

Was localizing it depending on how their, consumers behave in each country and what actually brings the most success and engagement. So it was definitely something that what we liked is we had one strategy, one consumer behavior, that then it could be localized based on every market. And we saw success as they were activating. It was a big partnership with every regional market to understand this.

PVSB (10:52)

I'm gonna bring you into this next question as well. And I understand it's appropriate given the fact that you both worked on this other campaign, the Effie winning Be So Extra Easter campaign at Walmart was all about converting shoppers. See, I do my research. I do my research, right? It was

Jessica DuQuesne (11:04)

Yeah. Wow. my goodness.

Ally Gill (11:06)

Yes. Yes.

PVSB (11:12)

all about converting shopper interest into actions. So guess my question is, I'll start with Ally and

Jessica and add

some commentary.

How does the consumer

Ally Gill (11:18)

Mm-hmm.

PVSB (11:19)

psychology of Halloween differ from Easter when you're building a commerce strategy? And did those Easter learnings inform you on how to approach scream activation at retail? What can you lean on? What can't you lean on?

Ally Gill (11:33)

what Jessica's been talking about is really understanding the shopper and that behavior in the first place really is where we start, regardless of what we're trying to activate, right? And that, you know, we we love that be so extra campaign.

Jessica DuQuesne (11:46)

my gosh.

Ally Gill (11:47)

We worked on that together, which is what we talked about a little bit before. and in when we developed that work, where we start is we understand.

the shopper and what's relevant to her and what matters to her in that season, And when we did that Easter campaign, it really was about so funny. I mean, be so extra was, you know, the the idea of cultural relevance was a really central underpinning of that campaign. The idea of extra at the time was definitely something that was in the cultural zeitgeist as as Jessica's been talking about.

the importance of of that shopper mom at Walmart in particular, and what matters to her in making these occasions really special for her family during that time and the ways that Hershey in particular can deliver for her in a during a season like that. And then how we partner with Walmart to deliver those, you know, we talk a lot, especially at Plywheel, as we think about

The strategy behind these programs and delivering in commerce. And we think about the stakeholders, how do we think about what's important for the brand to deliver? What's important for the retailer to deliver? And really ultimately, what's the right solution for the shopper, right? We really need to think about how do we deliver on those three things, So in that be so extra campaign, it really was all about what do we need to do for that mom during that occasion? how does Hershey deliver for her? And how do we do that through

Walmart, which is a really important

Jessica DuQuesne (13:14)

Yeah.

Ally Gill (13:14)

place for her during those seasons for her to go and get those solutions. and what is that ecosystem, And how do we deliver through that ecosystem of Walmart, which is really what allowed us to deliver that campaign. We leveraged influencers, we leveraged retail media, we leveraged the store, of course, and really brought it all together.

you know, in that in that total commerce solution that's so important right now.

Jessica DuQuesne (13:40)

Well, first of all,

I wanna say that it made me smile that you brought up that campaign. it was actually my first

Ally Gill (13:46)

Yeah.

Jessica DuQuesne (13:48)

campaign as a Hershey employee. so

And it was my first partnership definitely with TPN. And agree with everything that Ally said. But one of the things that also was to me very impressive about how Hershey approaches this, it ties to the same thing, to the business challenge and the consumer need. If you understand very clearly what those two things are, and you create these campaigns with those two principles in mind.

Then you will deliver this type of campaigns because again, it will all fit into place and it will come to life, especially when you partner with, you know, people like Flywheel that have like great ideas always. So if you are very clear in your delivery of that brief on what you need, then magic happens. And yes, we won that effie for Easter.

PVSB (14:37)

Always nice to have the hardware. I love that.

Ally Gill (14:39)

Yeah. Right.

PVSB (14:40)

Ally, me follow up with you. In your role at Flywheel, you obviously sit

Ally Gill (14:42)

Sure. Mm-hmm.

PVSB (14:45)

across the table from many CPG clients. I guess my question is, how rare is it for you to see a brand successfully stitch together an entertainment IP partnership?

plus international expansion and a seasonal retail activation all in one campaign. That seems like a lot of complexity. What made Hershey stand out to you?

Ally Gill (15:07)

It's not easy.

Right. I mean it is, I mean, we're here talking about it, right? Because Hershey did this really successfully and and not ever not everybody is able to accomplish it, I think this, you know, the idea of, you know, first of all, being able to bring together the stakeholders internally to accomplish it is no easy feat. and kind of getting together the idea early enough in order to do that and then kind of build the sell in is a huge part of it. So I would say

It's not necessarily often, but when it works, to use the word that Jessica just used, like it's magic, you know, when it works, it's it's really incredible. so for us, I think what really worked well about this is I'll go back to some of the things that Jessica said in the big the beginning is really kind of you know identifying that business challenge and then allowing us kind of the time and the access to resources within Hershey to really understand.

Understand the information that they had about the different markets and the consumers and the behaviors. We worked with Hershey in partnership with Hershey, and then as well as our own internal resources to gather information about those markets and those behaviors to really bring together with our partnership marketing team, our commerce strategy team, and then the Hershey resources across the markets to really understand what are those behaviors, what are the dynamics.

During this season, what is the brand really trying to accomplish so that we could come at it from a really smart strategic standpoint and not just coming and saying, here's the partnership we want, go execute it, but really allowing that exploration and what is the right answer? Because it, you know, and sometimes it isn't a partnership. we really try to come at it from a strategic place of

Is a partnership the right thing for the brand? In this case, you know, it really was, and it's been it's been a really successful situation. And then building thinking about the partnership across all of those different channels has also been really successful. This came you know, this came to execution across it came out in retail, but also there was PR and there was social and it really in activated in a very integrated way.

we knew from the beginning that what we were gonna do with this program was we knew we needed to start from a really core place that worked.

for the brand at a global level that then the markets were going to be able to take and activate in different ways that were going to work for those markets, So we we built it in a way that we knew they were going to be able to flex.

we knew would remain consistent because the core of the idea we knew was going to work for the brand and the partner, but then allowed flexibility for those markets to take and activate in a way that they needed

PVSB (00:00)

So Jessica, the Scream for Reese's campaign delivered what was called a compelling seasonal concept and highlighted opportunities to prioritize Reese's product placement at retail. My question is, how do you actually influence product placement in markets where the retail relationships are not necessarily as established as they are in the US? Is that the case? I guess the question is, and what's the commerce infrastructure playbook

for markets like Mexico, Puerto Rico, or what have you.

Jessica DuQuesne (00:31)

to be honest, it's

is not that different as it is in the US. What I would say the biggest difference is that in the US, our retailers know we're number one in the category. So absolutely, they're bought into anything that we bring to them because consumers are looking for us. Outside of the United States, We're not number one in the category yet, but we are coming to them. So then even more important to come with this compelling story, which I

We want to grow the category, so do they. They know they see the opportunity. We bring a great partner that we bring that insight that their consumers are connecting with that.

like partner IP that we brought. So again, we are bringing the strategy, we're bringing insights and we're bringing an opportunity for them to grow within the category. Every retailer wants to win, market share, category share across all retailers. So I think that when you come with all of that

Ally Gill (01:30)

Mm.

Jessica DuQuesne (01:31)

and deliver it to them, it presents a strong case to give us additional placement, as we can see.

with our growth and what the numbers that we delivered with the Scream for Resse's campaign.

PVSB (01:45)

Ally, I remarked before we started recording that I was at a Club Wholesale store today and I saw my first Halloween display and I thought, my God, and so it begins. But

Ally Gill (01:59)

Yes.

PVSB (02:00)

the seasonal confectionary category is one of the most contested shelf sections in retail. Every brand is fighting for the same.

holiday display real estate. From a commerce strategy standpoint, how do you counsel people like Jessica and Hershey to think about the interplay between in-store placement, the digital shelf, and social to amplify a very limited time partnership activation like this?

Ally Gill (02:31)

by the way, it is now called Summerween. If anybody hasn't heard, it gets earlier and earlier. and it's really important and it's one that w we are all talking about right now and figuring out, And this this notion of total commerce or connected commerce, which is really important because the way that our targets, our consumers

and what they expect from brands really is this seamless experience, right? We know that everything is connected. the way that they are, shopping and living and interacting with community and and brands really requires us to be not fragmented and in the way that that we are. but really we know that they they expect this seamless experience, they expect this, kind of

very consistent brand presence across all of the channels that they are living in. especially with this target of of Gen Z and millennials that often we are trying to reach. they're building community and and shopping and living on social. And so we really want to make sure that from social to digital to shelf to e com that that is all a very connected experience. And so

That's what we are always trying to counsel. And, as we were talking about earlier, the importance of kind of getting getting clear on what we're trying to accomplish early and bringing those stakeholders together, the more we can do that and the more that we can communicate around those objectives, the more successful these programs are going to be. And Jessica mentioned it, but I I think a really big part of that is.

getting that getting that total story together so that when you are going to your retail partner and you're trying to explain to them, this is what we're trying to accomplish. If you can get them excited about the total story, that's gonna help with that getting on shelf part of it as well.

PVSB (04:22)

Let me remind our audience that today I'm speaking with Jessica DuQuesne from the Hershey company and my colleague, Ally Gill from Flywheel. All right, let me start with Jessica and then I'll throw it to you, Ally. But in the UK, the campaign gave consumers a chance to win exclusive tickets to a private screaming of Scream 7 through in-store promotional materials. Sweepstakes and experiential prizes are classic shopper mechanics.

But how do you measure their commerce impact beyond the number of entries? What are the right KPIs for a promotion like this?

Jessica DuQuesne (04:58)

I will say consumer promotions are up to me. They're very interesting because they're very nuanced. I mean, I think that a lot of people want to measure by how many people entered the sweepstakes that is equal success, or how many people, if they participated or if the retailer

felt

that it was compelling enough in order to participate. I actually think that

consumer promotions, put the product in the occasion top of mind for the consumer and even give them a reason to believe, A reason to participate in the season, reason to think about the season, brings that awareness high. And it also gives them a reason to think, okay, maybe I can be part of this. Not a lot of people take the extra step to enter.

but.

I think that it motivates some of them if you have the right partner to at least follow what is going on with your brand and everything. So the right KPI would be absolutely engagement, sales, when the promotion is happening. And I will say, yes, the entries would be another another level. But I would say for us, that is one that we don't necessarily use it as an extreme measure of success, because

So as you can think, for us outside the US, we have a smaller share. And so what we want is awareness. We want to be buzzworthy. We want people to engage more with our brand. So those are other different KPIs that we use.

PVSB (06:35)

Allie, any thoughts?

Ally Gill (06:36)

I

I completely agree with what Jessica is saying. And I would just add to that, it was one of the components of the program that we allowed to be flexible. It was one of the things that as part of the toolkit, the different market activations, they they could execute the sweepstakes, but they didn't have to. So it was one

Jessica DuQuesne (06:55)

Mm-hmm.

Ally Gill (06:55)

of those things that the teams could select.

From the toolkit, but also if they felt that using the assets of Ghostface and the and the display vehicles, et cetera, was enough to get them that that execution at retail, they they could use the sweepstakes or not. the other thing I think it did well for us in terms of just that cultural connection for the brand is it sort of took that nostalgic connection we knew the target already had with the property and connected it to this upcoming.

release of the film So it sort of it generated that excitement between and that kind of affinity between something we knew the audience was already excited about and connected it to the brand that we were trying to get them enrolled in,

PVSB (07:41)

Jessica, Scream is a franchise with a very specific fan base. They're older, they tend to be horror savvy, a little bit nostalgic. Reese's skews is obviously much broader than that. How do you make sure that the partnership reaches the casual Halloween consumer and not just this ghost-faced super fan? And does that create any tension in balancing the creative that you're looking to activate?

Jessica DuQuesne (08:08)

I've learned a lot about Scream and their following since I started this campaign and started working with Paramount. There are different levels of Scream fans, definitely. There is the fan base that will follow every movie, that studies every movie. Actually, in the last three movies, they a little bit make fun of that following, right? Of the scary movie fans. But then there's the other

type

of fan that just likes Scream because it's just a signature of Halloween season, The people that relate Scream in other movies like Scream as part of what they watch every Halloween season to make themselves feel like they're in the mood of it and like they recognize the costumes. So I would say like the generic Halloween fan falls in between that.

You know, like, so from like, really, really like Halloween and like they start celebrating in July. You know, they start looking at their costumes to the ones that are like wait until like end of September, October, but they still are participating. So I think that Scream has a broader audience than just like the Die Hard fanatics. From the very beginning, we knew that Resse's was not going to be scary. I mean, we knew that.

We intentionally stayed away from blood, gore, knives, or anything that would push the campaign into horror. But we wanted to keep the ghost face iconic. So we made it work because we actually made it a little cheeky. We kept ghost face intact and scary, but we made Reese's be part of that scream universe. So we have an ad that actually says the classic rules on how to survive scary movies. And so we have Reese's actually saying,

don't answer the phone and it kind of like alludes like it's answering the phone and then don't separate don't leave your Reese's behind and then Ghostface chases people basically he's chasing reasons or we allude to it so we integrated the two worlds and it actually worked really well without being into the horror piece so it was fun

PVSB (10:15)

let me go to Allyson first on this. I know from my perspective, I'm sure you'd agree, we're seeing more CPG brands pursuing entertainment IP licensees, particularly around seasonal campaigns, whether it be candy, beverage, snacks. Do you see this as a durable strategic playbook or is this just kind of everything aligned? was the perfect timing for this.

What do you think separates a partnership that genuinely builds brand equity from one that's just looking for that short-term jolt to the quarterly numbers?

Ally Gill (10:44)

I think, it's a balancing act, right? as we've been discussing, it it has to be rooted in a brand objective or a business problem to solve. We always have to start there. So as we were mentioning earlier, we really wanna make sure we understand the problem and explore whether

A partnership like this is the right answer in the first place. It isn't always necessarily the answer, but when it is and when it's right, it can work really well. One of the things that when we at Flywheel, when our partnership marketing team explores these types of things for clients, we really want to make sure that it's the partnership does there or the partner does not overshadow the brand, right? Like Jessica was just saying, like these two brands came together really well.

in a in a balanced way to kind of work together. I think even the way the idea came out in Scream for Reese's was such a great balance between Scream and Reese's and kind of driving that call to action for the audience to come into the brand just worked really well for the two brands together. I think from a longevity standpoint, again, it kind of goes back to the strategy. I think there are a lot of partnerships

That you can partner with over time. You can say, as a brand, we're gonna stand for music or we're gonna stand for movies. And you can use that as a partnership strategy, and then over time use movies as a tent pole kind of activation strategy at the right times during the course of a year, because that also works really well in commerce too.

So again, I think it depends on your objectives and your strategy, but it certainly works well in a tent pole situation, but I think that tent pole can be in conjunction with a longer-term strategy from a partnership standpoint.

PVSB (12:37)

Jessica, anything to add?

Jessica DuQuesne (12:39)

Yeah, I mean, think that sometimes sometimes and I mean, I think we've all been at full of this. Sometimes brands fall in love with the property instead of solving for the business problem. So in a case of entertainment, for example, entertainment is not the strategy is an accelerator. So again, going back, we started with a simple question. How do we make racist synonymous of Halloween and grow the Halloween season internationally? So once we knew that behavior scream became an incredible, powerful way to accelerate that

journey is very different from saying let's partner with a movie because it's popular.

You

think about Gen Z as now everybody's thinking about Gen Z as their consumer. They want something authentic. They don't want brands showing up in culture just for the sake of showing up. They expect authenticity and relevance. I think that the future, like you were asking earlier, is fewer partnerships that are more intentional and building platforms that can evolve multiple years instead of one-off promotions.

PVSB (13:42)

Ally, as I think about the rise of agentic commerce, particularly in 2026, my question

Ally Gill (13:46)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

PVSB (13:48)

to you is, if an agent's doing the Halloween shopping as we get to contextual shopping searches,

Ally Gill (13:54)

Sure.

PVSB (13:54)

how does the brand need to think about winning an agentic shopping agents?

Efforts to choose the right products for someone's Halloween basket What's kind of going through your mind and how do you how do you offer counsel to someone like Jessica?

Ally Gill (14:12)

This is really important. I mean, shoppers are using AI supported shopping tools, right? And those tools are pulling from brand feeds, they're pulling from site content and data, right? So what's culturally relevant more and more is definitely going to register, I think as brands think about all of the content that's out there, agents are becoming smarter and smarter. The AI, the tools are becoming more and

sophisticated so I think it's we have to think about how our content is showing up in all of these channels right of course the way our content on digital shelf and things like that needs to be correct and scrubbed and it's got to show up the right way for these search tools but I think even as we think about the way that our content shows up across every channel that really becomes more and more

important as these agentic tools really are becoming more like assistance for our shoppers and how we want them to make decisions in an automated way. We have to be very choiceful and deliberate about the way that our content and our brands are are showing up in those channels.

PVSB (15:20)

And Jessica, how is this kind of creeping into your plans for the 2026 season? Is it platform by platform? it market by market that you're really thinking about how your brands show up in a agentic search? What's kind of your thought process around that?

Jessica DuQuesne (15:38)

I think like as much as like most brands, we are still trying to figure this out. Know that it's not part of our plans. We're definitely thinking about it. We are thinking about it. We're thinking about how we show up authentically, how, you know, like to navigate that world, which is very relevant, but at the same time, it's very complex. So it is part of our plans. is part of what we are.

studying and how the consumer integrates with it. But I will say it's still a work in progress at this moment.

PVSB (16:14)

So my last question to you, Jessica, is you described this campaign as kind of just the beginning as a template for future collaborations. How do you build upon the cultural connection that you've already established as you start thinking about taking this into the next big summer ween Halloween season?

Jessica DuQuesne (16:32)

well, we are, we're doing a second year with Scream. So 2026, we will be having Scream for recess one more time. And this is for this year. Now, past 2026, we are working really strategically with our team to think what is the next iteration.

having those same insights in mind, having the same shopper needs in mind, how do we elevate?

Halloween and our partnerships for 2027 more to come. But definitely

PVSB (17:08)

Very good.

Jessica DuQuesne (17:09)

it's in the works. again, going to the with the same, you know, a strategy in mind, how do we now build that now that we're building momentum with recess, now that consumers like we're seeing growth and we're seeing retail retailer engagement, how do we keep building on that momentum with with our insights and, having a consumer in mind? So, yep, you will see.

Soon, coming soon to July 2027.

PVSB (17:34)

Brilliant, very excited, very excited.

To our listeners and the over 46,000 followers on LinkedIn, thank you, thank you, thank you for doing what you do every day, whether you're building brands.

driving retail partnerships, deploying technology, or shaping the future of commerce. You are the industry we cover and this podcast exists because of you. If today's conversation sparked something for you, maybe a new idea, fresh perspective, or just a reminder why this industry is worth showing up for every day, share it, tag us, tell a colleague. The more voices we bring into this community, the sharper all of us get. Jessica, Ally, thank you for taking.

Time out of your days to have this conversation. I absolutely loved it. It was a great case study in activation around a category 10 poll event. Thank you for joining us.

Jessica DuQuesne (18:29)

Thank you. Thank you for inviting us. was a pleasure.

Ally Gill (18:31)

Yes, thank you for having me. Great.

PVSB (18:34)

Until next time, keep pushing the conversation forward. I'm PVSB on behalf of my co-host, Papa Raj. This has been the CPG Guys podcast. Goodbye.