Heinz has always been committed to making ketchup of uncompromising quality and unmistakable taste. And while other ketchups are available, none of them are Heinz. But as inflation rose and people’s finances tightened, the brand needed to double down in their efforts to ensure that instead of turning to a discount option our loyalists continued to believe that It Has to Be Heinz.

To that end we were briefed to remind young Canadian adults of their love for Heinz during the critical BBQ season by driving relevant cultural conversation to keep Heinz top of mind for summer.

For over 150 years, Heinz has been the world’s favourite ketchup. There's nothing like it, and people have strong opinions on how and where Heinz is best enjoyed.

We decided to tap into one of these passion points: Do you prefer your Heinz ketchup in the fridge or in the pantry? Cardi B famously tweeted her opinion on it and it’s been fiercely debated on social ever since. For a simple sauce loved the world over, everyone seemed to have an opinion.

Heinz had to respond. But we didn’t just weigh in with a tweet. We created a BRAND NEW PRODUCT: “Cold Ketchup”. Same Heinz ketchup, now served cold and in bottles using colour-changing label technology. When refrigerated, the iconic Heinz keystone changed to blue signaling it was at the perfect cool temperature and ready to be enjoyed.

Our target was Canadian Gen-Zs and late Millennials. When it comes to their relationships with brands, they look to have their values, lifestyles and preferences reflected back to them.

This younger audience is critical to Heinz success, but also quick to call BS on brands that try to enter a conversation in a forced way. We knew that we needed to tap into authentic insights about people’s love for our brand and the role it plays in their lives.

Through social listening we identified a real passion point, and with Cold Ketchup rather than just joining the ketchup temperature conversation, we did something to actually help by creating a new product in response. We introduced it into the platforms where the ketchup debate was already bubbling in order to supercharge the conversation and further embolden people to proudly state their ketchup temperature options and engage with the Heinz brand.

We began by reigniting the pantry-vs-fridge debate with a barrage of social activity - Instagram polls, Reddit threads, and influencers taking to the streets to speak to Canadians all across the country. Once the debate reached its peak we dropped our campaign, led by a “classic beer ad” spoofing launch video - using all the tropes beer brands use to romance coldness. We then rolled out an additional influencer campaign on Meta and TikTok featuring food and lifestyle creators popular with our target. Our 360 campaign also included high-impact OOH and a multi-pronged PR blitz.

Fans could get their bottle through social or retail, where we created a custom Cold Ketchup fridge. We also partnered with Wendy’s and created blue Heinz Cold Ketchup sachets. When customers asked for Cold Ketchup, they were given the new blue packets with their order straight from the fridge, spurring excitement and debate on social.

Cold Ketchup was a hit. Our fans took notice and quickly scooped up all the limited-edition, colour changing Cold Ketchup bottles. Even the blue Cold Ketchup packets at Wendy’s sold out.

On social we delivered 12MM impressions, and our influencer content engagement rate was 466% higher than brand benchmarks. Across FB and IG, we had a record-breaking organic engagement rate, 56% above previous campaign benchmarks - and a 33% increase in engagement rate on paid social. Our social poll generated over 20K responses (with 68% of people voting that Heinz should be “served cold”).

The raucous debate on social soon bubbled over to mainstream media. Cold Ketchup achieved 26MM PR impressions and was featured on major national news outlets like CityNews, CBC, and ET Canada, totalling over 2MM earned broadcast impressions and ensuring that Heinz once again, owned the ketchup debate.