After selling almost 90 million Kisses in Canada last year, Hershey, the Mississauga, Ont.-based chocolate and confectionery products producer, is bringing Hershey’s Hugs into the market as its first broadly marketed white chocolate product.

Kisses are small droplet-shaped chunks of milk chocolate, individually wrapped and sold in packages and in bulk.

Hugs are the same size and shape, but made of a swirl of white and milk chocolate.

According to Hershey’s director of marketing, Adrian Sark, the company built a plant to make Hugs after market research showed Canadians wanted white chocolate.

‘Had legs’

‘We went out and talked to millions of consumers and discovered that white chocolate was an idea that had legs,’ Sark says.

‘Now, we have an entire facility built in Pennsylvania, to make them,’ he says. ‘It will manufacture billions of Hugs.

The Hugs marketing campaign includes point-of-purchase displays, coupons, and in-store sampling.

White and burgundy

For now, they are being sold in 227-gram bags, colored white and burgundy to distinguish them from bags of Kisses, which are silver-colored.

Inside, brown stripes circle the silver foil wrappers to help differentiate the product from the plain foil-wrapped Kisses.

‘Happiness’ theme

Hugs advertising will play on a ‘Happiness,’ theme, according to Sark.

‘Perhaps it’s the bite-sized pieces, perhaps it’s the concept of small indulgences, but Hugs, like Kisses, seem to engender feelings of happiness and we intend to build on that,’ he says.

The Canadian chocolate and candy bar industry took in more than $421 million last year, according to A.C. Nielsen statistics. AV