The two leading platforms for Heinz Tomato Ketchup are the superiority of their product over the competition and the fact that it's made using only ingredients of natural origin. While traditional communication focuses on shoppers – 30+ consumers – they also engage with Gen Z in other media to build awareness. That way, Halloween was presented as the perfect opportunity to unite those two platforms in a youthful, fun, and unique way.

We were challenged to create a campaign that spoke to Gen Z based on a yearly pop culture event, highlighting that Heinz Tomato Ketchup makes a better product than other brands by using the best ingredients.

Spooky Ingredients is a short horror animated film created by Heinz and directed by one of Brazil's most prominent young artists, starring the scariest ingredients used by their competitors to make ketchup.

The film premiered on Halloween night to remind consumers of the horrors of eating other ketchup brands and of the strangest stuff they put in their product as a counterpoint to the ingredients used to make Heinz Tomato Ketchup – all of which are of natural origin. That way, we highlighted that other brands still use ingredients that can be harmful to consumers' health.

Beautifully crafted 2D animated characters, Halloween's familiar strangeness, humour, and jump scares were used in this thriller to engage with viewers in theatres and on Instagram.

And to reach a wider audience, direct mail kits with posters, horror masks, soda cups, and popcorn buckets were sent to Gen Z movie influencers.

Halloween has become a big part of Brazilians, and consumption habits show just how relevant the date is, as candy sales have increased up to 117% in the past year, and search for costumes in the country's biggest e-commerce have skyrocketed 492% around the date. That shows how much the local population has been interested in celebrating Halloween, justifying campaign investments with this theme.

That led us to the insight that while Heinz doesn't put anything scary in their ketchup, other brands still use harmful ingredients, not following the latest consumer trends and insights – research shows that 78% of consumers will pay more for clean label products – that show how people have been looking for better ingredients in what they eat.

So, we used the horror theme to show how scary other ketchup can be when compared to Heinz, which is made using only ingredients of natural origin.

First, we partnered with a young artist with a unique tracing style who had already worked on projects focused on young adults. Then, we had him craft the movie characters based on the chemical and physical descriptions of the ingredients used by Heinz competitors.

To get to the final result in each of those characters, we searched for artificial and harmful ingredients on Heinz's ketchup competition labels. We were inspired by the worst names, bringing their chemical and physical characteristics to life in animation.

After that, we worked together to come up with a script while he created the scenes, elements, horror soundtrack, and ambience of the film, posting it on Instagram and screening it in movie theatres on Halloween night right before the biggest horror blockbusters, which lasted for the entire week.

To broaden the audience, we picked ten of the most iconic scenes from the film and crafted posters with them, which were used in the movie theatres and as part of the direct mail kit sent to influencers alongside soda cups, popcorn buckets, and horror masks.

We counted on the popularity of the artist behind the craft of this idea's execution and the reach of the influencers picked for this campaign to make it the most engaging content on the Heinz Brazil Instagram account in the second semester. But in addition to a record number of likes and shares, we looked at the comments to know how well our target received the campaign.

Over 90% of them were positive, complimenting the boldness of the film and the craft used to make it. At the same time, many viewers also mentioned the crazy ingredients, showing that the film successfully delivered its message and linked competitors to the horrors of making food with harmful components, also meaning Heinz's message of superiority and naturality of its ingredients was well received.