We launched the world's first smackable, Heinz dispensing billboard and put it right outside restaurants that refuse to serve Heinz. To find these anti-ketchup restaurants, we used social listening and data mined restaurant reviews from customers. From hot dog stands in Chicago, to McDonald's all across the country, we uncovered numerous restaurants that won’t serve Heinz ketchup. Everytime we found a new Heinzless restaurant, we’d found a new location for our smackable, Heinz dispensing billboard.

Nearly four out of five people (88%) prefer Heinz ketchup when eating out. But there are restaurants that refuse to serve it. McDonalds stopped serving Heinz ketchup in 2014, and restaurants like Louis Lunch (the originator of the hamburger) have outright bans on ketchup. And across Chicago, serving ketchup with a hot dog is considered a crime. But for Heinz fans, there’s nothing worse than being stuck eating without it.

Heinz is the world’s most beloved ketchup. It’s a thick, rich sauce unlike any other, which is why every ketchup fan knows, “It Has to be Heinz.”

Heinz has enormous reach and ubiquity, but there’s a minority of restaurants out there that don’t serve it. Some places serve inferior, off-brand ketchup. Others refuse to serve the red sauce altogether. In Chicago, serving ketchup on a hot dog is practically a crime. So we set out to make Heinz available at these vehemently anti-Heinz places.

Our objective was to ignite a conversation that proved to these restaurants that despite what they may believe – their customers want Heinz.

With the launch of Smack for Heinz, we got Heinz in restaurants that had always been a no-fly zone for the brand. We broke the rules by bringing Heinz to restaurants across Chicago, where sales had fallen 20% below the national average due to their strict ketchup norms. Grammy-nominated DJ Marshmello even performed above our board in Chicago, attracting a crowd of thousands. When we went nationwide, we targeted 180 restaurants, including Louis Lunch, the birthplace of the hamburger who famously bans ketchup. And our smackable mobile app allowed hundreds more to smack for Heinz.

Though we’d ruffled some feathers, our launch video performed 157% above social benchmarks and garnered a 99% positive sentiment. We’d created an explosive national conversation, with pick up by major outlets like USA Today, The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert, Fox & more. In a few short weeks, we’ve already earned 500M impressions.

We started by bringing our smackable, Heinz-dispensing board to the city most notorious for their anti-ketchup stance: Chicago. Chicago restaurants firmly believe that Heinz doesn’t belong on hot dogs, so naturally, we placed our board outside Chicago’s most famous hot dog spots.

We then invited people to tell us where they weren't getting Heinz and datamined customer complaints about missing ketchup on platforms like Yelp. We found a restaurant in LA with a super strict anti-ketchup policy, and another in Connecticut that kicks people out when they ask for ketchup. Every time we learned of a new Heinzless location, we brought our Heinz-dispensing board to it.

But there was one name we kept hearing over and over again: McDonalds. After they stopped serving Heinz for 10 years, everyone wanted these beloved brands to come back together. So naturally, we placed our Heinz-dispensing billboard right in front of several McDonalds locations.