We utilized traditional media to elevate and legitimize an untraditional creative idea - turning a consumer pain point into a consumer demand for our brand. Fans generated significant brand love in reaction to the traditional OOH and Print placements, but most engagement occurred on Social. The campaign required significant social listening in order to react in real time, proving to fans that the brand was willing to walk-the-walk to help put an end to Ketchup fraud - the act of refilling Heinz bottles with generic ketchup.

Restaurants are a key audience for Heinz. Compared to retail consumers, they buy more ketchup, more often, and the condiments they serve help drive consumer preferences. Heinz B2B business is approximately $900 million in gross sales, so any loss is significant for the brand.

But as the economic climate worsened in 2023, and the price of food, including Heinz. skyrocketed, restaurateurs in particular were feeling the strain. Across the US, 92% of operators said the overall cost of food was a significant issue for their business.¹ Heinz needed to act fast to keep restaurateurs from switching to private label.

But as the most iconic ketchup brand in the world, a bottle of Heinz ketchup on the table holds a certain cache. Restaurants knew it. And so did our fans.

So when, through social listening, we discovered that restaurants were getting caught in the act of refilling Heinz bottles with generic ketchup, we knew this real behaviour and consumer pain point could be our opportunity to rally our fans to demand restaurants serve Heinz. Reminding restaurants of the value of serving Heinz Ketchup at a time when they might be considering making a switch.

Heinz is the world’s most beloved ketchup. It’s a thick, rich sauce unlike any other, which is why we’ve long said, “It Has to be Heinz.”

But as the global cost of living rises, everyone is feeling the pressures of inflation, meaning both businesses and consumers are cutting costs. In tough times restaurants often look to cheaper alternatives of lesser quality and taste than Heinz.

Our objective was to reinforce brand love for Heinz in order to show restaurants that while there are other ketchups, none of them can – or should – replace Heinz.

Instead of using traditional business-to-business sales strategies to convince restaurants to serve Heinz ketchup over other, cheaper alternatives, we used our fans. We launched a fully integrated campaign that showcased restaurants refilling Heinz bottles with generic ketchup. The campaign received an immediate passionate response on social, which showed restaurants that their customers truly believe “It Has to be Heinz.” This outpouring of brand love proved to restaurant owners that serving Heinz was worth it, more powerfully than if we had launched a campaign trying to tell them ourselves.

Then to show our commitment to helping end ketchup fraud, we engaged Heinz fans to help us identify restaurants where they suspected ketchup fraud was being committed, so we could get them the real deal. We even launched a website where restaurants could anonymously admit to it themselves, in exchange for a supply of real Heinz.

Our strategy was to subvert a pain point to reaffirm our brand truth: It Has to be Heinz. Through social listening, we uncovered a widespread consumer pain point: restaurants have been refilling Heinz bottles with generic ketchup and people could tell. Across social, people expressed their frustration and disappointment with this inferior ketchup swap. Instead of doing what brands typically do and shy away from this behaviour, we leaned into it to rally Heinz fans to stop it. We knew we didn’t need to tell restaurants that “It Has to be Heinz” if we got our fans to say it for us.

To this end we launch a campaign with OOH, Print, and social designed to trigger an emotional response in our fans. OOH ran with QR codes, and combined with our social drove consumers right to our website, where they could submit restaurants they suspected of Ketchup Fraud.

We started by bringing attention to Ketchup Fraud through social, DOOH, print and video assets, using the impact of these placements to drive social and earned conversation. Placements included high-impact DOOH in both New York & Chicago, along with a New York Times full-page feature and placements in US Weekly, InTouch and Life & Style.

Once the word was out, we ran a wider OOH campaign with QR codes that drove directly to our website, which, along with social media content, asked fans to tell us which restaurants have been committing ketchup fraud. Then we connected with these and other restaurants to provide them with the real deal, making sure that when people see Heinz – it’s actually Heinz.

The campaign first went to market in March 2023 and ran until December 2023.

By tapping into an insight that resonated with Heinz fans across the world, our campaign

drove 92% positive sentiment, exceeded the social engagement rate benchmark by 128x, and brought to life hundreds of organic stories and anecdotes that confirmed first-hand experiences with Ketchup Fraud.

With this campaign, Heinz gained 33 new vendor accounts in under a month, including re-signing Boston's iconic Fenway ballpark, increased Heinz sales by 8% vs the previous year, and gained 0.6 points in market share vs. the previous year, at a time when many were turning away from higher priced products.

In response to the consumer reaction to discovering Ketchup Fraud, Heinz will launch Heinz Verified in 2024. The first last-mile delivery platform verification to show consumers which restaurants Heinz confirms serves Heinz Ketchup for real. Consumers will be able to filter their restaurant searches on UberEats to see only those that carry Heinz.

Our campaign insight began with a Snapchat video, which showed a restaurant employee getting caught refilling a Heinz bottle with generic ketchup. As we dug deeper through social listening, we came to realize that this is an incredibly widespread restaurant behaviour. Heinz fans everywhere continue to post about it on social media, with every tweet, story and thread confirming that they can always taste the difference, and come out disappointed every time it’s not real Heinz.