Episode 148 -“Is This Heinz?” Case Study Reviewed by NetApp, GrowthMode Marketing and The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
On this latest episode, we talk about creating social buzz around Heinz Ketchup in Turkey, through the “Is This Heinz?” activation chosen by Contagious 🍅
Was the consumer insight in this video a true problem Heinz needed to solve? Are they protecting the brand or the consumer? And is this attempt to ensure genuine Heinz is served in restaurants really necessary, or just a publicity stunt?
Join our guests Steve Mudd (Director, Strategic Messaging and Content Marketing at NetApp), Deanna Shimota (CEO of GrowthMode Marketing), and Sharalyn Orr (Executive Director, Global Local & Cultural Innovation - Corporate Marketing at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.) as they debate this case study’s merits with Automated Creative’s Dan Moseley.
Episode 148 -“Is This Heinz?” Case Study Reviewed by NetApp, GrowthMode Marketing and The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Dan Moseley 00:00
Welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. The weekly show where we invite brands to review other brands' ads. This week, we have guests.
Steve Mudd 00:44
I'm Steve Mudd, the Director of Strategic Messaging and Content Marketing for NetApp. I'm also Senior Advisor to Talentless AI, a new AI-powered creative agency.
Deanna Shimota 00:53
Hi, I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing which is a B2B Demand Generation Marketing Agency.
Sharalyn Orr 01:00
Hi, I'm Sharalyn Orr. I am Executive Director of Corporate Innovation at Estée Lauder Companies, and I focus on corporate marketing and consumer experience.
Dan Moseley 01:08
So this week's ad, and I'm going to call it more of an activation, is from Heinz Ketchup. It's called "Is this Heinz or is that Heinz?" And it was activated in Turkey, I believe. But it's kind of part of the brand's wider efforts in this space to kind of allowing consumers to, to spot fakes, or find more about what's, what's the real Heinz behind the product? What would you vote this out of five? Okay. Okay. So pretty good scores all around. Who would like to lead on just taking us through kind of what was going on here in the campaign?
Sharalyn Orr 03:45
I think this is one of the best representations I've seen of leaning into a consumer insight and doing something ultimately creative and helpful at the same time, right? I mean, they clearly found out through talking to consumers about... They put ketchup on everything there and then B, the consumers are complaining like, "Hey! This is a Heinz bottle, but this doesn't taste like Heinz." So then they're like, how can we fix this for them? And then they went back to the table and actually changed something on their packaging so that consumers would be able to spot a fake. And I think that's really genius.
Deanna Shimota 04:20
You know, in this situation, the buyer is actually the restaurant, right? So if you stop and think about it, they're doing like a consumer campaign to create awareness that puts pressure on the buyer. Heinz actually sent all of these restaurants their bottles with the new stuff on it. And it didn't say whether they told them or not that they put the red Pantone on it. But, you know, if they did, that's kind of brilliant and sneaky, too, because now you have these restaurants using the off brand ketchup and putting it in there while they're doing the social campaign to ensure that people would go and see that and start to talk about it and create buzz around it. So that was pretty smart.
Steve Mudd 05:03
I'm sitting there thinking, "Was this really a problem?" Like, were there really people calling, complaining about... you know, was this a manufactured problem? To me, it felt a little, a little weird and disingenuous. Like it was more like, "Hey, we heard that they're using the fake ketchup in there. We need to make sure they're using the real ketchup. So let's manufacture something."
Sharalyn Orr 05:22
I think when you look in the broader context of the whole campaign of it, is it Heinz where they went to Reddit, they went to Instagram, they went to TikTok to find stories of actual people and the ludicrous things they do for their Heinz ketchup, like people carrying it in their wallet so that they've got a little packet in their wallets. They have it at the nice restaurant. It probably wasn't a real problem, but I think it's kind of genius what they did. And leaning into that, I don't know, maybe they heard one story about someone complaining and then they're like, "Okay, let's fix this." And it created something that people will talk about, right? They made their product premium.
Deanna Shimota 05:57
It very much could be somewhat engineered. But it's, it's smart because having worked in the restaurant industry back when I was in college, it was kind of disgusting. You take the ketchup bottle that has like just a little bit left in it, and you would go and you would refill it and you think about it now. It's like, wow, that's really unsanitary. But that is how it works at a lot of restaurants. And who hasn't sat down and picked up a ketchup bottle and thought, "Gross. How old is this ketchup bottle?" But I could see where this could actually backfire on Heinz, because, quite frankly, if they use the same bottle over and over... Over time, it's going to fade. It's not going to stay that true red forever. So they can be using Heinz and people can start calling them out like, "You're not using Heinz!" If there really are people that are that obsessed.
Steve Mudd 06:44
To me, I'm wondering about the value that a brand brings, right? So if I wear a dupe, like a fake Gucci... Whatever, it's still a bag. It still works as a bag. And this instance with ketchup, right? There's health issues there. My question is, like, from a value standpoint, are you protecting your brand and your company or are you protecting the consumer? And it's a nice, it's a nice connection I think when you can protect the consumer at the same time.
Sharalyn Orr 07:08
Well, and I think, you know, something that they did that was really smart as they took ketchup, which quite frankly, is not sexy. Who sits around thinking about ketchup? And they got the average person talking about ketchup and thinking about it. And I can tell you just watching it, it made me think about ketchup, you know, so it gets people thinking about ketchup when people probably don't normally think about ketchup. So at the end of the day, it probably really wasn't about like, "Hey, let's increase the revenue with these restaurants." It was, "How can we get consumers involved in this just to create more buzz and brand awareness?"
Steve Mudd 07:50
I'm always curious because, you know, there were meetings. Like, what was the origin of this brief? You know, if the origin was... The finance guys being like, "Hey, we know these restaurants are pretending to be our brand." They could have just sent a letter to the restaurants from the lawyers saying, "Don't mess with our ketchup." Right? Like, that's... That would be to do it. But if the brief, if the brief was, "How do you get people to talk about ketchup?" Right... A product that has essentially remained unchanged since, you know, the 1800s. This is it, this is one way to do it. That's a hard brief to figure out how to get people to talk about ketchup.
Deanna Shimota 08:26
I think Heinz has been making an investment in just trying to create social buzz. There was another one they did and Dan, I don't know if you've talked about this on a past episode, but they created a ketchup bottle that has like the cap on both ends because they said there was an argument. Do you set the ketchup on the cap or do you set it on the other side? And so they're like, we solved that. We put it on both ends. So no matter which way you set your ketchup, the ketchup is sitting down by the cap. And then they did a whole social campaign about it. But it's like, clearly, somebody you know, and I think they're working with Wunderman Thompson, has this as like, "This is our strategy. Let's get people talking about ketchup." And Heinz, specifically, by doing some clever like, "What are the challenges?"
Sharalyn Orr 09:11
You have to reinvent yourselves a little bit. You have to be kind of bold and to innovate to, to keep that momentum even when you become something like Heinz, where like, nobody can name any other ketchup brands, then I think that, that's really necessary and it takes bravery. That's a scary thing to do for a heritage brand.
Dan Moseley 09:31
Brilliant. So if you were the brand manager, would you have approved it in its current format? Big thumbs up for yes, thumbs down for no, and then kind of, in the middle if you wanted some changes.
Steve Mudd 09:43
I... I don't know what changes I would have wanted, but I think I would want something more.
Dan Moseley 09:48
Brilliant. Thank you so much, everyone, for your time today and we'll be back next week with more ads.
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