Our Candy Crush: Greg Guidotti
“Everybody knows the shake of that box.”
The thieves who broke into a Sunoco convenience store in Bristol, Connecticut, on March 13, 2024, at 4:08 a.m. had a plan. Like the criminal masterminds who stole the French crown jewels from the Louvre, the Bristol bandits knew speed was of the essence, executing a smash-and-grab in which they took only the things of greatest value: cigarettes, lottery tickets, and the store’s supply of Nerds Gummy Clusters.
Not exactly the kind of promotional campaign Ferrara Candy Company chief marketing officer Greg Guidotti ’99 MBA might have wanted but, nevertheless, a testimony to the remarkable popularity of Ferrara’s newest brand phenomenon.
“The thing got a little bit of press, which was lovely,” says Guidotti, “and hilarious when the television camera panned to the candy shelf and there was a giant hole where the Gummy Clusters used to be.”
Guidotti got his MBA at UConn Stamford, studying and taking classes at night while working for Kraft Foods, handling their Post cereals account, learning the ins and outs on the job, and gaining a foundational understanding of marketing from UConn.
He left Kraft for Gillette (now P&G), moving his family to Singapore to expand the market for Duracell batteries. He traveled to Russia, Venezuela, and across Asia, growing the Duracell business from three to 12 countries before Kraft called to invite him back. He worked with iconic brands like Capri-Sun, Kool-Aid, Shake ’N Bake, and Oscar Mayer — with its Wienermobile.
But Guidotti was reunited with his first love when he moved to Ferrara in 2019. “When I was growing up in Stamford, there was a store called Happy House, and it was 93 seconds away from my house. I know that because me and my friends would ride our bikes as fast as we could to get Atomic Fireballs. I’m 55, so 48 years later, Atomic Fireballs is one of the brands in our portfolio.”
His mission at Ferrara was to take products that were underappreciated and build value.
Taking the candy world by storm: the Nerds Gummy Cluster — and UConn’s Greg Guidotti.
“Ferrara had just acquired the legacy Nestlé candy businesses, so Nerds, Sweetarts, Laffy Taffy, Gobstoppers. Great businesses, but the brands were very small, and as part of a giant food company, they didn’t get the attention.
“We at Ferrara are focused solely on growing sugar confections. We have these jewels of brands, and we needed to be able to drive a different relevance to them. Nerds launched in 1983. Everybody knows the shake of that box. Everybody remembers buying them at the community pool or at the baseball field. One of the challenges was, how do we make Nerds more consumable, more poppable? That’s how we conceived of Nerds Gummy Clusters.”
A Nerds Gummy Cluster is a fully sensorial experience. Nerds pebbles are steamed onto a molded gummy matrix, so the flavors explode as the candy percusses between your teeth, and you taste it and feel it and smell it and hear it inside your head, and suddenly “I’ll have three more” becomes 12 or 20 or a whole bag.
“What’s great about this category,” Guidotti says, is “it’s an emotional category. You have memories of the candies that you loved growing up. It gives you a smile or nostalgia when you see it, and maybe you’ll buy it. Everybody has a story when it comes to our brands, whether it’s Jelly Belly or Nerds or Sweetarts or Laffy Taffy.”
One story Guidotti tells is how the company responded to a terrible tragedy in Lewiston, Maine, when, in October 2024, there was a mass shooting at a local recreation center.
“It happened right before Halloween, and everybody felt unsafe,” Guidotti says. “The president of Bates College [Guidotti’s undergraduate alma mater] wanted to provide a safe place on campus for kids to trick-or-treat. I reached out and said, ‘Listen, I work at a candy company, and I would be happy to donate candy for this event.’
“This year was the third year. It’s gotten bigger and bigger, year after year. It’s just doing the right thing. It’s a way for the school to connect with the community in a way that’s just authentic — and it spreads joy.”
Nice work if you can get it.
By Pete Nelson
Photos courtesy of Ferrara