Heinz products have been a cupboard staple for decades, but their heritage, whilst a major strength, had created a bit of an image problem amongst a younger audience who saw the range as very traditional. Often relegated to the back of the cupboard, the Heinz range was where you turned when there was nothing else to eat, and our scope was starting to feel limited.

We needed the brand and its diverse range of products to be more prominent in people’s minds when thinking about their daily food choices – this meant:

• Bringing modernity to the brand, making it feel more current and widening its appeal to a younger audience.

• Demonstrating the food possibilities with Heinz's range and growing their associations as a provider of plant-based products.

With so many FMCG brands churning out new usage recipes, we wanted to do something that would make Heinz feel different.

To shift perceptions and attract new consumers to our plant-based range, we looked to subvert the usually serious tone of cooking shows with our comedic ad-funded programme (AFP), Flex Kitchen.

Knowing that under-35 flexitarians love short-form content and comedy over more traditional advertising formats, we partnered with Channel 4 and UK comedians to bring humour and credibility to the brand whilst showcasing the wider range of our plant-based products that were flying under the radar.

As a social-first, ad-funded program, Flex Kitchen tackled the preachy and humourless stigma surrounding plant-based eating and flexitarianism head-on, bringing a fresh and entertaining twist to the genre. By aligning with the audience's interests and preferences, we were able to create a completely new genre of cooking show that appealed to both existing and new consumers.

The result was incredible content that breathed new life into the plant-based eating narrative and attracted attention from competitors.

To engage the elusive 16-34 audience, the show was designed in a snackable 10-minute format to mimic the content this audience engaged with the most. We knew we needed some presence on TV and BVOD to drive reach and fame, but with a limited AV budget from March-August, we needed to leverage the full AV ecosystem of YouTube and Social to drive additional views.

Smart AV and Online planning across a suite of formats and placements on All 4's website saw us deliver a staggering 22,488,000 All Ad impacts and a further 14 million views across social channels, demonstrating the efficiency and value of a holistically planned AV eco-system, built with the behaviours of our target audience at the heart.

The entire Flex Kitchen plan, including content, talent AV, social, and production, cost a whopping 35% less than the equivalent reach against the 16-34 audience in linear TV alone.

Flex was the most-watched piece of branded content on All 4 in 2022, delivering 23m views and 3.5m impressions.

We smashed our minutes watched benchmark by 265%, equating to 3.7 million minutes watched across five episodes.

Consumers loved Flex, with 69% saying they enjoyed the content and wanted to see more of this type of activity.

We shifted perceptions; “I think Heinz can be seen as quite a traditional brand, and this made it seem more modern and contemporary'.

We empowered more people to try plant-based eating with a 91% uplift against ‘Heinz make it easy to eat more plant-based meals.'

We shifted key metrics with a 37% uplift in awareness and 74% more likely to buy Heinz products because of the campaign.

Flex Kitchen drove a 48% increase in the value of the Vegan Mayo range, with a 35% uplift in sales following a consistent presence in every episode.