150 years of expertise in tomatoes and yet, we had never launched a Tomato Pasta Sauce.

Heinz’s entry into the Pasta Sauces category is our first success story in an adjacent category in over 15 years. 

In 2021, consumers were looking to bring excitement to home cooking following changes in post-pandemic habits. A great opportunity to disrupt the stagnant category.

Fast-forward 3 years, Heinz has achieved a 10% volume MS and become the #1 brand driving growth and penetration in the pasta sauce category.

How did we do this? Consistently building on our long-term creative platform: Ridiculously Good.  

In the midst of economic uncertainty, we set ourselves to disrupt the category, challenging the established investments of Dolmio and Loyd Grossman.

Our bold ambition is to become #1 pasta sauce brand in the UK in 10 years. To do this, we needed to:  

- Quickly surpass the tail, challenger brands, and reach 10% market share in just three years.

- Be in the top 3 brands in our key brand health metrics:  

--- Spontaneous awareness: reach 15%, surpassing all challenger brands.  

--- Consideration: reach 45%, surpassing all challenger brands.  

- Drive quality and trust attributes for the Heinz brand, was also imperative.  

- Drive value and incrementality to the category – we wanted at least 30% or our sales coming from incremental shoppers to the category. 

According to Kantar, Heinz is the second most chosen FMCG brand in the UK. From baked beans to ketchup and cream of tomato soup, the brand is a British household staple.

Heinz has over 150 years of expertise in tomatoes and yet, it hadn’t launched a Tomato Sauce for Pasta. It made total sense when consumer research revealed that Pasta Sauces was the most credible adjacency for Heinz to enter.  

But, whilst stunts and short-term successes are relatively easy for brands like Heinz, building brands into adjacencies isn’t easy– few examples come to mind when thinking of brands that have won in adjacent categories. This, and Nielsen’s estimation that generally ~80% of product innovations fail, makes pasta sauces sustained growth one of the few successes to-date. 

In 2021, in a post pandemic world, people’s behavior changed. We were looking for excitement and at-home meals weren’t giving what we craved.

Besides, the category wasn’t helping either, it was a sea of sameness. It was dominated by household brands Dolmio (43% market share) and Loyd Grossman (35% market share).

The rest of the category was made up for private label and Italian brands such as Barilla, Mutti that had been around for 10+ years. 

Therefore, we couldn’t be shy. In a sea of sameness shelves, we needed to bring our new pasta sauce recipes upfront and showcase its superiority.

The brand was facing a complicated context, with two major players and private label attacking from the other side.

How did we succeed? Leveraging the brand’s equity and signature wittiness and its tomato expertise, via a long-term creative platform: Ridiculously Good, built consistently along the last three years.  

The secret ingredient was consistency.

What began as “Ridiculously Late, Ridiculously Good”, a bold campaign which brought excitement to the category, successfully got people to try our pasta sauces. The “Ridiculous” was on-brand: witty, human, honest and playful. We created different articulations of the same idea in unexpected ways, disrupting the category.  

The consistency of approach, visual identity, and tone of voice of the campaign proves that when consistently built, long-term creative platforms can deliver sustained sale spikes along the journey, while tapping into culture in a relevant way – and most importantly, keep bringing excitement to the category year after year. 

Key strategic decisions:

Leverage the Power of the Brand.

To benefit from Heinz’s brand’s iconicity we needed to stay true to the foundations and respect Heinz’s signature personality, values and purpose, with an idea born out of Heinz’s wittiness.

Put the Product at the Forefront.

In a category dominated by two household brands, we knew putting the product’s superiority upfront would boost brand awareness and recognition, driving sales and growth. It needed to be our hero.

“Ridiculously Good” Over and Over Again. 

Consistency ensures consumers continue to remember Heinz pasta sauces by building on distinctive brand assets and reinforcing existing memory structures. 

Tap into Culture to Involve the Consumer. 

In a world where trends change daily, we needed to embrace creativity at the speed of culture. The Ridiculously Good platform needed to evolve over time to ensure continued product relevance with consumers. 

The platform was deployed in three stages from 2021 to today.   

ANNOUNCING (2021- 2022)

Heinz launched its pasta sauces over 150 years of tomato expertise, apologizing for the delay through “Ridiculously Late. Ridiculously Good” campaign.

We also capitalized on tardy cultural moments like The Lionesses winning the 2022 Euros.

ACCELERATING (2022-2023)

A year later we jumped onto the TikTok trend “penne alla vodka”, inspired by Gigi Hadid, launching Heinz x Absolut Vodka Pasta Sauce: “Absolutely Heinz, Ridiculously Good”.  

We launched an innovation made to provoke that divided the country: Tomato Ketchup Pasta Sauce and invited the consumer to decide whether the product was: “Ridiculously Wrong?”. 

ESTABLISHING  (2023-today)

Leveraging the Ridiculously Good campaign, we emphasized product superiority through taglines like “Ridiculously Fiery, Ridiculously Good” and “Ridiculously Tempting, Ridiculously Good".

Recently we’ve launched an entertainment-led product, jumping into another category and tapping again on a trend: The Godfather Pasta Sauce. 

The launch of Heinz Pasta Sauces was the brand’s first venture into adjacencies in 15 years, resulting highly successful.

1. Heinz has reached a 10% market share and secured its space in the category.

2. Heinz has drove category growth, achieving a 91% increase while competitors declined by 23% and 21%.

 3. Heinz has overdelivered on all brand health metrics, with significant growth in spontaneous awareness (+13pp since 2021), consideration (+9pp since 2021) and purchase intent (11pp since 2021).

4. The campaign has also positively impacted Heinz’s masterbrand, by improving very relevant attributes to current Heinz challenges, such as trusted brand (+7pp) and quality (+8pp).

5. Heinz has also helped the whole category to grow, driving volume growth and continuously recruiting new shoppers with a 60% incrementality to the category.