The creative executions of the Heinz Fraud campaign were based on a widespread consumer pain point we’d discovered through social listening: restaurants have been refilling Heinz bottles with generic, off-brand ketchup. Instead of doing what brands would typically do and shying away from this truth, we took a calculated risk and leaned into it, launching an entire campaign called Heinz Ketchup Fraud that put this behavior on display. It featured caught-in-the-act style assets.

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

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. And it’s noticeable by Heinz lovers.

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

Heinz needed to secure its B2B audience, but knew that restaurateurs wouldn’t be responsive to a big, well-known brand telling them to serve their product. There’s only one group who can meaningfully influence a restaurant: customers. And in this reality we identified our greatest opportunity and driving campaign insight: Even when times are tough, there’s one golden restaurant rule that trumps all logic: The customer is always right.

Heinz lovers are some of the most committed, diehard fans out there. Some collect ketchup packets, others have the brand permanently tattooed on their body, and every one of them can tell when it’s not Heinz. Our fans are our superpower, so we needed to use them to prove to restaurants: It Has to Be Heinz.

Across America, food service is a growing industry. But it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to run a successful restaurant in a post-pandemic world. Rising food costs wasn’t the only financial challenge Heinz’ B2B audience was up against. They were dealing with rising labour costs and the reality that many of their customers are coming in with tighter wallets. To keep their business up and running, they’ve been forced to turn to cost cutting measures, such as turning away from premium brands like Heinz, even though it’s every customers’ preferred ketchup. We needed to develop a campaign to rally Heinz fans and remind restaurateurs, It Has To Be Heinz.

Heinz needed to provide security for its B2B audience, but knew that restauranters wouldn’t be responsive to a big, well-known brand telling them to serve their product. There was only one group who could meaningfully influence a restaurant: customers. Even when times are tough, there’s one golden restaurant rule that trumps all logic: The customer is always right.

Heinz lovers are some of the most committed, diehard fans out there. Some collect ketchup packets, others have the brand permanently tattooed on their body, and every one of them can tell when it’s not Heinz. Our fans are our superpower, so we needed to use them to prove to restaurants: It Has To Be 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 to get restaurateurs on our side. We launched a full integrated campaign that showcased restaurants refilling Heinz bottles with generic ketchup.

We started by bringing attention to Ketchup Fraud through high-impact DOOH, print, social and video assets shedding light on this situation at restaurants.

Once the word was out about businesses not using Heinz, we turned to fans and asked them to tell us which restaurants had been committing ketchup fraud – which we believed would open partnership doors and help us get more restaurants serving Heinz. When the world started talking about it, we doubled-down on our conversion efforts by adding a simple QR code to all campaign assets, driving to our campaign website – translating into critical sales leads for Heinz’ Away From Home team.

To get ahead of restaurants switching to private label, Heinz launched a campaign that leaned into a distinct truth about restaurant behavior and rallied fans to prove It Has to Be Heinz.

The campaign resulted in positive, tangible results for Heinz gaining 33 B2B customers, including Fenway Park, within the first month of the campaign.

Consideration scores jumped +3pts and social engagement exceeded benchmarks by 666%. Our website visits exceeded over 330,000 while Heinz increased 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. This equalled a total of $450k in incremental gross sales volume at a time when Heinz was struggling. All while unlocking another level of brand love for Heinz.