The Heinz Ketchup Fraud campaign utilized PR strategies to drive a meaningful conversation and reinvigorate brand love. Based on an insight discovered through social listening, we took what had become a consumer pain point and used it to rally our fans to become our voice. When restaurants were considering making the switch to cheaper ketchup alternatives, the consumer driven conversation around Heinz Ketchup fraud not only reminded restaurants the value in serving Heinz Ketchup, but our consumers in fact demanded that they do so. We didn’t have to tell restaurants to serve Heinz. Our fans did.

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. 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 behavior 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 come up with a new idea that reinforced brand love for Heinz in order to show restaurants that while there are other ketchups, none of them can 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 a widespread behavior: 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.

In the face of restaurant’s real business challenges, we knew traditional B2B outreach from a brand wasn’t going to move the needle. We needed to show restaurants that serving Heinz was good for business, and to do that we needed to reach their customers and create an explosive conversation that proved It Has to Be Heinz.

To generate awareness, conversation and consumer engagement for Fraud, our PR team conducted media relations leveraging our widespread insight that restaurants refill Heinz bottles with generic ketchup. Our key message: Heinz wants to help restaurant owners stop filling their Heinz bottles with inferior ketchup. Along with our press release, we distributed campaign materials to the press that highlighted just how boldly we were calling out Ketchup Fraud.

We started by bringing attention to Ketchup Fraud through social, DOOH, print and video assets, using the impactful placements to drive social and earned conversation. Including 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. In conjunction with our campaign launch, we kicked off media outreach to spread the word far and wide to press.

Once the conversation spread, 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.

We received coverage from 45 countries around the world.

The campaign ran March to December'23

By tapping into an insight that resonated with Heinz fans across the world, our campaign created a global conversation and movement that proved to restaurants that their fans don’t just want ketchup – they want Heinz. From a PR perspective, our campaign garnered 100M impressions, received coverage from 45 countries around the world and drove 92% positive sentiment. It also engaged fans everywhere, as we 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.