To mark that spot, Hershey's did so with not one, not two or three signs, but nineteen different signs representing each of the nineteen chocolate brands they merchandise including PayDay, Twizzler candies, Swoops, Resse's peanut butter cups, Almond Joys, Hershey Kisses®, Hershey's Milk Chocolate, Heath, PayDay, York, Jolly Rancher, Hershey's cocoa and Hershey's Syrup.
The culmination of that sign project involved a collaboration between many great contributors to Times Square signage including Clear Channel Spectacolor (project manager), Ogilvy & Mather Advertising (concept development), BIG (Brand Integration Group - a division of O & M), Atomic Props (fabrication of props), Multimedia LED (provider of LED ticker), and North Shore Neon (fabrication of props & sign installation).
Now that is a Spectacular, signage can sure convey a message and it's clear what this building is all about.
Photo credit: Clear Channel Spectacolor
The gift store has come to represent a 15-story outdoor fantastical "chocolate factory" whose incredible signage includes 34 dimensional props, four steam machines, over 4000 chasing lights, 30 programmable gel lights, 56 neon channel letters, 14 front-lit signs and an LED ticker, all designed to represent the various Hershey candy products in their packaged wrappers. In total, the spectacular measures 215 feet in height with a 60-foot width from one side of the building to the other. The crowning touch of its factory look was its two Times Square smoke stacks that are identical to the ones in its main Hershey, PA factory, complete with the company's name vertically painted on each stack.
This entire collage of signs is located on the northwest corner of Broadway and 48th Street, on the lower rooftop and building sides of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Although this sign project was completed in 2002, it is still a paramount project because of the diversity of signs used to complete the project. With this diversity, the Hershey spectacular has an odd pedigree of also becoming a sign museum representing every type of sign technology used for outdoor advertising since the 1900s.
Some last minute adjustments to the Hershey blade sign.
Photo by North Shore Neon
The concept behind the store front signage was that of a "historic fantasy" where the store was intended to mimic the company's chocolate factories in Hershey, PA. "Its design concept was born out of imagining that founder Milton Hershey had also built a chocolate factory in Times Square in 1905," said Brian Collins, executive creative director at Ogilvy & Mather's BIG. "We then imagined what the factory might have looked like as Hershey's grew throughout the century. To further enhance its factory look, we also have steam coming from the factory pipes encircling various parts of the spectacular."
Talk about eye-candy, the "factory" includes a pair of visually dominating 51-foot tall smoke stacks with the company's name painted vertically down the smoke stack shaft, a giant 15-story Hershey Milk Chocolate billboard, a pile of 28 dimensional perfect Hershey Kisses stacked up pyramid style on a roof top, and a giant cup of hot chocolate, with steaming vapors rising up and away from the cup. On the bottom of the spectacular is placed a horizontal LED ticker, that is reminiscent of the "Kiss Plume" which is the paper release strip used to pull the protective foil away from the candy. The ticker employs the same colors, white background with a 'powder blue' color for the text messages that appear across the white background screen.
Eye-candy sign museum
A more interesting factoid of the Hershey spectacular is that the 19 displays of its sign blitz represent the entire history of sign making with each of the signs representing just about every form of sign making since the 1900s. In gazing upon its sign collections in sudden enlightenment, a sign man would quickly notice the following: paint-on-walls (smoke stacks), incandescent chase lights (Hershey blade sign and Twizzler blade sign), neon channel letter (Reese's sign, Hershey's sign), dimensional signage (Hershey Kisses, Hershey's Milk Chocolate billboard, cocoa cup, Hershey's coco container), mechanical animation (spinning Breath Savers mints), a kinetic wind vane (Jolly Rancher candy), tri-vision (Almond Joy), front-lit signs covered in vinyl (Heath) and bringing it into the modern age a horizontal LED message center whose text not only displays Hershey brand messages, but selected customer messages as well.
Above the Hershey gift store, on the Broadway facing side, part of the Hershey blade sign, a flex face vinyl (Hershey's Dark Chocolate), the Tri-vision (Mounds), the steaming cup of hot coco, and the neon-lit Twitzzlers sign.
Photo by Louis M. Brill
To complete the Hershey's spectacular on the southeast corner of the Crowne Hotel, both the 48th Street side and the Broadway facing side of the building were covered in signs, even extending upwards along the side of the hotel. Mike McGraw, who was then Director of Spectaculars at Clear Channel Spectacolor noted, "In Hershey's signage integration with the Crowne Plaza Hotel, the Hershey spectacular was designed to be more architectural in its look. It's not just a series of signs hanging off the building. Instead the signage is adopted to the building, and built in tiers taking advantage of the Hotel's facades and lower roof levels for sign mounting purposes."
North Shore Neon
The placement of the 19 different signs in an integrated fashion was no mean feat as logistics, street accessibility, and size all determined which signs went up and in what order. The complete installation was handled by North Shore Neon, (Deer Park, Long Island) under the direction of Larry Brown and crew. With so many Hershey signs going up on a daily basis, between the building facades and the rooftop, Brown noted the company utilized several Cherry Pickers (man lifts) and a crane with a 285-foot telescoping arm.
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