Heinz Ketchup is an iconic brand that’s long been a staple in households around the world. That said, it’s seen its fair share of challenges from new category entrants. As a result, the brand started to see brand affinity scores decline as competitors stole share. For the first time ever, people were questioning whether Heinz was for them.

Our objective was to re-ignite an emotional connection with Heinz with a culturally relevant experience to bolster consumer loyalty. We sought to stay top of mind by instigating conversation and reinforcing our iconic status as the #1 Ketchup.

But we couldn’t simply come out and boast about the brand. If we were truly an icon, people would be able to tell our story for us. So that’s exactly what we sought for them to do through a user generated content led integrated campaign that celebrated consumer love for Heinz around the world.

If someone asked you to draw ketchup, our hunch was that you would draw Heinz. 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 asked one simple request “Draw Ketchup.”

Consumers drew the Heinz glass bottle, the Heinz label, 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 turned the entire brand experience into an integrated global campaign featuring consumer drawings in OOH, Social, Digital, and as labels for our bottles. We even gifted custom bottles to consumers featuring their own drawings.

Throughout the world Heinz is considered to be a cultural icon. Heinz is ketchup. As such, we had the opportunity to assert ourselves in a way that no other condiment in the world could. But simply preaching that message as a brand could come off as bragging and inauthentic. We couldn’t just say Heinz is ketchup. We needed consumers to say it for us. Our belief was that when people think of ketchup, they picture the iconic Heinz glass bottle. But we needed to find a way to prove it. So, to uncover this unspoken association we conducted an anonymous social experiment. We asked people around the world to simply “Draw Ketchup”. We had a strong feeling that most of them would draw Heinz.

We anonymously asked participants in person and via video chat across five continents to simply “draw ketchup.” The experiment was expanded with an anonymous website that asked people from around the world to do the same.

The result? 97% drew Heinz. Drawing bright red bottles, our Heinz keystone, and even the number 57 all from memory. The quality of drawings varied but they had one thing in common: when they drew ketchup, they drew Heinz.

Even in their simple form, the drawings were unmistakably Heinz. So, we turned the user generated content into a global campaign. We launched with a video documenting the experiment, and placed the drawings in high impact out-of-home. We then put the drawings on our iconic bottles in-store and rewarded participants with a custom bottle featuring their drawing.

We even went as far as putting the best drawings up for auction on digital art websites.

News outlets across the globe ate the campaign up. Generating 127x publicity vs. initial investment with a whopping 83% positive media sentiment. Spanning 18 countries from the UK, to Ireland, Greece, Germany, and Brazil we saw our social engagement rate sore to 1495% above average.

With 97% of people drawing Heinz we saw a direct lift in Heinz Ketchup sales by 10%. Proving that when it comes to Ketchup, it has to be Heinz.