Heinz Ketchup is known the world over. But the brand was in danger of becoming seen as old and nostalgic, in addition to facing competition from new category entrants. As a result, the brand started to see brand affinity scores decline while competitors stole share.

For the first time, people were questioning whether Heinz was for them, so we needed to reignite love for the brand while re-asserting Heinz as the definitive Ketchup.

We had a hunch that if you asked someone to draw ketchup, they would draw Heinz. And we set out to prove it. To most, ketchup = Heinz. But the brand couldn’t come out and say that. So we let the world do it for us. We created an activation featuring an anonymous social experiment across 18 countries in five continents – connecting with people in person, on video conference calls, in classrooms, and online. We had one simple request: Draw Ketchup. People drew the Heinz glass bottle, the Heinz keystone, the tomato on the label, even the famous “57”. Some drawings were beautiful, some basic, some downright scribbles, but they all had one thing in common, almost every person drew Heinz Ketchup.

We then launched a global campaign featuring the activation video and the drawings themselves. Each drawing was messy and unique, yet unmistakably Heinz, as the core brand elements shone through. We juxtaposed the simple drawings by featuring them in high-impact out-of-home as well as full page newspaper insertions. The integrated campaign rolled out in social, digital and was even aired on TV. We took the submissions from the anonymous website and sent consumers custom bottles with their drawing as the label. We even took the best drawings and put them up for auction on digital art websites.