Heinz Ketchup has been a global icon for over 150 years. But the brand was in danger of becoming seen as old and nostalgic in addition to facing competition 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 create relevancy and cement the brand’s iconic status. Heinz is the originator. Its great taste and uncompromising quality are unmistakable and unmatched, which is why it’s the world’s favourite ketchup. We wanted to highlight Heinz’s superior taste when paired with our favourite foods: burgers, french fries and hot dogs.

We worked with a budget of roughly $40K to develop print, OOH, and social. The campaign ran in Canada across Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.

Some foods just aren’t the same without Heinz Ketchup. We decided to tout Heinz’s iconic status by highlighting the brand’s unmistakable keystone logo in a delicious new way. Burgers, fries and hot dogs were molded into the shape of the logo, with the words ‘It has to be’ on our artwork. The word “Heinz” did not appear as the brand is so ingrained in pop culture that it was not needed.

We selected food that ketchup is commonly paired with and shaped them into the brand’s well-known keystone logo. Burgers, fries and hot dogs were molded into the shape of the logo, together with the words ‘It has to be’ on our billboards and posters. The word “Heinz” did not appear as the brand is so ingrained in pop culture that it was not needed. For the first time, Heinz launched without a mention of its brand—just food with ketchup in the shape of its keystone.

The campaign ran across OOH, social, digital banners, TV snipes, and print from April 12th to August 1st, 2021.

The campaign was a huge success, instantly gaining industry recognition. It performed exceptionally well with a total of 12.2 million impressions. Based on an audience detection methodology, our out-of-home performance results indicate that we over-indexed (+28%) against billboard reach averages in effectively delivering our campaign.