Heinz has been an icon for over 150 years, but was suffering from eroding relevancy and cheaper competitors. To reignite love for Heinz, we developed a strategy of consistently showing, not telling, that It Has to Be Heinz. Every piece of work delivered on this brief, helping the brand drive sales and restore its iconic status.

Heinz Ketchup is known the world over for its glass bottle, iconic red, keystone label and superior quality and unmatched taste.

But being a 150 year old brand comes with a unique set of challenges. In Heinz’ case, the brand was at risk of losing its icon status and being undercut by generic, off-brand ketchup. Our objective over 5 years was to re-ignite an emotional connection with Heinz by engaging consumers with culturally relevant brand experiences that would prove its iconic status. Showing not saying that It Has To Be Heinz.

Heinz advertising helped make the brand famous for decades. The brand utilized well established pieces of brand equity, like the slow pour to cue taste, iconic glass bottle to cue quality, and keystone to cue iconicity. These benefits were lodged in consumers' minds but they were abandoned in favour of more straightforward functional messaging. Which contributed to the brand's lack of cultural value. Simply put, people knew Heinz was better, but the brand lost its spark.

150 year old Heinz suffered from two major issues over the last 5 years.

Losing its icon status. Heinz awareness is high and its functional benefits were known but the brand's relevance was in decline. As a result the iconicity, emotional connection and love for Heinz was eroding.

Consumers questioned Heinz. Forced price increases due to inflation, supply chain issues, and increased competition made consumers for the first time ever question their ketchup. Heinz began losing share to cheaper, private label options.

To remind the world that It Has to Be Heinz, we needed to reignite the love for our iconic sauce. Our desired outcome was to get consumers to see Heinz as a cultural icon that’s worth paying more for.

We needed to reignite love for the Heinz brand, but knew that stating our superiority ourselves would be meaningless and futile. Instead of trying to imbue new meaning, we collectively looked out into the world and uncovered the brand’s core truth: Heinz IS ketchup. As such, we had the opportunity to assert ourselves in a way that no other condiment in the world could. We didn’t need to say “It Has to Be Heinz” if there was a whole world of people out there who would say it for us.

We created a series of work over 5 years that proved It Has to Be Heinz.

Pour Perfectly solved a 150 year old mystery by showing consumers the perfect angle to get Heinz out of the bottle.

When the world shut down, we gave consumers something to do: A 570 piece puzzle in Heinz red.

We launched a campaign asking people to Draw Ketchup. Everyone drew Heinz.

When AI started trending, we tapped into the conversation and asked it to draw ketchup. Even AI drew Heinz.

We rallied the nation to put an end to uneven bun and weiner packages with Hot Dog Pact.

We launched Ketchup Fraud to put an end to restaurants refilling Heinz bottles with inferior ketchup.

When a fan account shared Taylor Swift eating ketchup and “seemingly” ranch at an NFL game, we relaunched Kranch, a struggling ketchup-ranch mashup, as Heinz Ketchup and Seemingly Ranch.

As a result of our strategy to reignite brand love and Heinz iconic status, we’ve seen a +12% Global Heinz Ketchup Sales Growth compared to year-over-year numbers since 2019. Additionally Heinz has stolen +3.2 share points back from our competition. Growing market share, while competition declined. We grew Household penetration 1.7x faster than the total category. Dollar share went from 72.6% in 2019, to 74.1% in 2023. Retail sales alone saw a 47.24% increase from $578MM in 2019, to $851MM in 2023.

In 2023, Heinz achieved ‘Icon’ status by KANTAR – only 4% of all brands (food or otherwise) achieve this status, putting Heinz in an elite position within the category. After 5 years of showing, not telling consumers why It Has to Be Heinz, we saw consideration for Heinz jump +3pts, while value perception increased by +3pts.

Our long term strategic approach was to prove to the world that It Has to Be Heinz. To execute on this strategy meaningfully, we needed to continuously tap into human truths and find opportunities for Heinz to play a role in culture.