Heinz Ketchup is known the world over for being the definitive ketchup. But being as big as Heinz has its own set of challenges. It’s becoming increasingly harder to maintain our relevance, brand love, and leadership position within the category.

As summer BBQ season approached, we needed to create a press-worthy act that would hack culture and earn attention by inserting Heinz into a relevant, ownable conversation.

Through social listening and cultural commentary, we uncovered one of the world’s most

controversial injustices: wieners come in packs of 10 and buns come in packs of 8. Why? It’s archaic, a travesty and frankly, a serious waste of hot dogs.

As the condiment of summer, Heinz needed to put an end to the madness. Long celebrated for making hot dogs even better, we knew Heinz could play the role of hero by brokering a deal to once and for all fix the uneven package conundrum.

Enter the Heinz Hot Dog Pact, a campaign aiming to solve this obnoxious consumer pain point by brokering negotiations between bun and wiener companies to finally sell in even quantities.

On July 6, following Canadian and U.S. long weekends when the pain point of unequal packaging was top of mind, we hacked culture and inserted Heinz into the zeitgeist.

To achieve mass awareness, OLV and social posts were deployed that clearly outlined the issue. We called on big bun and big wiener to resolve the bun and wiener packaging mismatch, and invited consumers to take action by signing the Heinz Hot Dog Pact on Change.org. TikTok sensation, Lubalin, was enlisted to further fuel the debate by creating a unique anthem that rallied everyone to fight the injustice that Heinz was standing up to.

Once the conversation started to bubble and hot dog enthusiasts and even celebs took notice, we released a statement calling out big bun and wiener companies to do better. We leveraged contextually relevant out of home boards – placed uncomfortably close to bun and wiener offices – highlighting the uneven bun to wiener ratios, and demanding answers. Food and lifestyle influencers helped share the pact while hot dog and bun brands furiously crafted responses to our posts.

Our plan created a groundswell so large that the story was picked up by Canadian and American news outlets who demanded that big bun and big wiener companies finally address this issue – and celebrated Heinz as a savior. The uproar became so heated that the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council was called in to defend how this nonsensical state of affairs had been allowed to continue under their watch for so long.

Following the campaign, Wonder Bread called us up unprompted and announced that they were changing their packaging to packs of 10 – ending the mismatch once and for all.