Jennifer Aniston starred in one of the cutest SkinnyPop commercials in a major rebrand campaign for Hershey’s popcorn brand.

The spot focused on authentic creative design built by humans. AI did not have a role in developing this ad, said Ryan Reiss, vice president of marketing at SkinnyPop.

Advertising is about to take a dramatic turn and MediaPost wanted to know if brands are prepared.

Reid made it clear that his style leans more toward hands-on creative development. So I asked him what he thought might happen to advertising when AI agents start selling to AI agents on behalf of consumers looking to make specific purchases. But I’ll come back to that in a minute.  

SkinnyPop’s campaign — Popular for a Reason — allowed the brand to step into a new era in a more authentic and creative way with humans designing and producing the spot, Reiss said.

In the ad, Aniston checks into a hotel where the guests seem like they are about to ask for an autograph, but instead find themselves obsessed with the bag of SkinnyPop she holds at the registration counter.

A rollout across TV, digital, and social leverages Hershey’s media partnerships and in-store activations to drive visibility, trial, and conversion.

SkinnyPop wants to lead the ready-to-eat popcorn category. Hershey Salty Snacks Company owns SkinnyPop.

Ad video placements went to online video and connected television (CTV), including YouTube and Hulu.

It also ran during a cultural event such as the Oscars via the Glambot, along with paid and organic content aimed to generate buzz.

“This ad was development by humans, not gen AI,” he said. “We started working on the campaign about six months ago.”

The AI agents — the kind that Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others are building — will likely run through browsers and take responsibility for finding and buying a product based on criteria from the consumer.

Most ad executives have some sort of opinion on this, so I plan to make this topic into a series. Sometimes they have a lot to say.

On the creative-development side, Reiss builds the ad with an agency, shooting and showing up with media partners, although he acknowledges he is not an expert in technology. One of his main creative challenges is to reach consumers on a variety of platforms.

AI agents will eventually do that for him and SkinnyPop. When I asked Reiss how he will advertise to these agents that will reach out to consumers, he said he is “intrigued at what AI promises to do,” and expects it to “reshape every business in some way the same way the Internet and printing press did. People talk about it as one of the biggest significant technical leaps this world has known.”

Reiss said his focus remains on consumers and how they will start to leverage technology, no matter what happens.

Consumers will use technology to automate certain technology, he said, but he believes consumers will always want to have a connection with the items being purchased.

Reiss did know enough about technology to mention Google’s Willow and Microsoft’s Majorana 1, both connected to quantum computing.

“I don’t claim to know what will happen,” he said. “As long as our focus remains on what consumers want, even though agents are scrapping the internet to look for information, the technology will discover we have a delicious product that meets their needs.”

Its Popular For A Reason campaign featuring a Jennifer Aniston ad allowed the brand to step into a new era in a more authentic, creative way, SkinnyPop VP of Marketing Ryan Reiss said.