Heinz’s latest campaign ‘Ketchup Fraud’ highlights the fact that restaurants often put cheaper tomato sauces inside Heinz-branded bottles.
Developed by Canadian creative agency Rethink, the print and social campaign is also running on out-of-home (OOH) platforms in New York and Chicago.
Rethink chief creative officer and partner Mike Dubrick has claimed that duping Heinz sauce is “a real behaviour that we noticed all over the world and wanted to bring to light.”
“It shows just how much weight the Heinz brand carries and how much even just the bottle speaks to quality,” he added. “While we’re flattered by the behavior, ultimately, we want to make it unnecessary and are excited to work with the restaurants to do so.”
Heinz North America marketing director Megan Lang added: ”We saw someone caught in the act of refilling Heinz with generic ketchup, which prompted us to dig in further, and through social listening we discovered that this was a true and widespread behaviour. We thought, what better way to express our core brand belief that ’It Has to Be Heinz’ than to simply amplify an existing consumer behaviour in a supportive and funny way?”
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The marketing campaign has been praised widely by industry professionals. Gymshark chief brand officer Noel Mack wrote on LinkedIn: “Incredible. This is brand.”
Imagen Insights co-founder Jay Richard also dubbed the campaign as “great work”.
Zach Masters, a digital marketer and content creator, also added that he was “loving Heinz’s latest US campaign which trades off the insight that some restaurants refill with inferior products.”
