Episode 163 - Heinz Stadium Heroes Reviewed by Danone, Microsoft, Maersk and Henkel
When you’re as huge a brand as Heinz, where do you make a difference in your advertising? The Italian campaign “Stadium Heroes” focuses on the heart - trying to “sell a feeling” of belonging, of being part of the football game, and putting the spotlight on unsung heroes.
On the latest episode of Advertisers Watching Ads, we analyse the ad chosen by Contagious with our guests Alexandra Illiashova (Head of Media, Digital & Ecommerce Belgium at Danone), Nate Pinkston (Head of Growth, Retail Media, at Microsoft), Rasmus Rudnik Seidler Hansen (Head of Marketing Media at A.P. Moller - Maersk), and Matthias Hanschke (Global Head of Media & Digital Strategy at Henkel).
How does this emotional branding exercise land with them and what are Heinz getting out of this? Watch the episode and tell us what you would rate it!
Episode 163 - Heinz Stadium Heroes Reviewed by Danone, Microsoft, Maersk and Henkel
Transcript
This is automatically generated, so it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, the creative effectiveness adtech platform, and every week this is a show where brands review other brands' ads.
Thanks to Contagious for being our long term partner. Before we get to the ad itself, let's meet this week's guests.
Alexandra Illiashova 0:39
I am leading digital media and e-commerce team for Danone in the Belgian Market.
Nate Pinkston 0:44
Hi, I'm Nate Pinkston. I'm Head of Growth at Microsoft's Retail Media.
Rasmus Hansen 0:48
Hello. I am Rasmus Hansen, Head of Marketing Media at Maersk.
Tom Ollerton 0:51
Right... Let's see this week's ad.
On a scale of one to five, how many points would you give this? One, two, three... Woah, Rasmus... Harsh... Harsh, indeed.
Matthias Hanschke 3:30
If I'm to speculate on what Heinz wants to do with this, it's really evident that they're going for emotional branding, focusing on the heroes, the human aspect story, and really taking the product out of it.
Alexandra Illiashova 3:41
For me, it's all that. It's about celebrating those unspoken heroes. And I think it's actually about certain fundamental human truth, the sense of recognition and pride, sense of belonging, being part of something bigger, and then the third one, it's probably around the sense of commitment. They're there for 40 years, it's in the family. The story is told in such a way that it's quite a feeling and quite powerful.
Nate Pinkston 4:03
It's a long ad, and so you've got to get folks that are going to sit through and listen to two and a half minutes of an ad. I could see it arguably being just in the Italian market or even specific regions in the Italian... I don't know how, you know, how much rivalry there is? Or would you show a rival stadium? I think it's a... Milan football team.
Tom Ollerton 4:22
Where's this being shown? Who's seeing it?
Matthias Hanschke 4:24
I think it's pretty obvious that it's catered to the Italian market. And I think the reason they did it is because they're sponsoring that exact stadium so they could make that connection. You could have done this in any big stadium around the world, had they been in the UK, had it been in English, I think the reach of this could have been much more wide.
You easily can replicate it. I mean, if you go and broaden this to the US and maybe take some other pieces like the NFL or other clubs, you can easily replicate it because the community behind that, they need to go to their favorite place to grab some food before the game starts. I mean, this is like everywhere else, the same. But what they really want to do is telling the people that they're the partner that they need to get prepped before game. And those people, like, who are in the food trucks, they believe that Heinz is the best product that they match with their typical food. I mean, they are trying to sell a feeling. If you're going to the stadium with a small community, I mean, these are super specific people who are giving the best for their team on every day, and then they need the sandwich. They can rely the taste will be similar.
Alexandra Illiashova 5:30
I think it's part of their bigger picture and bigger strategy because if you look across other ads like the one with the tattoo label and the bottle, it's also appealing to different people, to different consumers. It's all tapping on inclusivity. It's all about the feeling part of community, and therefore their audience is also much larger. Potentially, the reach is higher, the appeal is stronger and so on. But the sales dimension of this... Nah, I think we're talking pure engagement. It's just touching the heart. And when you touch the heart, you end up in the person's hands when he or she will be doing the food shopping.
Matthias Hanschke 6:01
What gets people together? What brings people together? Food, right? So they have that angle and it's bringing people together on a feeling. And this is just centered about consumption occasions, right? This occasion on the traditional halftime panini. Of course, Heinz is the provider of this.
Nate Pinkston 6:16
You have to have multiple strategies, right? You can't just play one angle. Certainly, not somebody the size of Heinz. I'll bet the AI campaign got some buzz and maybe got a little bit of attention, but probably did not perform as well. And so, you go back to the roots of what works. Hey, heart sells.
Matthias Hanschke 6:33
If this is for the long term play, evoking those feeling about occasions is really good. We've seen beer brands doing the same on football for decades, right? Having that ritual with your brand and it seems to work for a lot of beer brands, and that's why you see Carlsberg on jerseys. That's why you see a lot of Budweiser doing all the Super Bowl ads. It's the same metric. It's the same mechanism that you're doing. My question is, do we really have the same feelings about ketchup? The halftime panini, I can agree with but do we go as far as determining the ketchup? I don't know. But if it works, it works.
Tom Ollerton 7:06
What would have made this better?
Matthias Hanschke 7:07
Maybe the scalability of it in terms of where to pick it up? Where to bring in? Where to host it on the different channels? I mean, this could have been 6-second-ads on YouTube. This could have been like 6-second-ads with also UGC content on social media where you just create buzz, and I mean, if you now use new techniques like TikTok. Getting in some content creators, which are also from the stands, from this team and from the club and just interviewing people and transfer the feeling of, "What does this panini and the halftime mean to you?" And the stadium feeling. I guess you could create a lot of buzz on social media as well, not only on the classical media channels.
Nate Pinkston 7:48
Could've done it in multiple stadiums, you know, you spread across and then you could have done it for different markets. And you've got one master cut that has, you know, you can use for the big branding spots, but you can do just like the Milan Stadium and do one for, you know, Rome or Naples or whoever.
Alexandra Illiashova 8:05
I'm on the opposite side of the bridge here. I wouldn't change a thing. I think this ad is just brilliant and pure and it evokes all the emotions that we often miss being very performance-driven, very AI-obsessed lately. So I don't know, it just brings back that, yeah, that human truth and people being people. I wouldn't change anything.
Tom Ollerton 8:24
Would you sign off this ad in its current form? Thumbs up or thumbs down? One, two, three... Thumbs up. Guys, thank you so much, and we'll see you all next week.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Listen to our ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.