In its latest stroke of marketing genius, Heinz has taken inspiration from a series of real-life culinary confessions for a new pasta sauce campaign.
Celebrating pasta-induced rebellion from a number of unlikely sources, the new creative – which will run across UK print, OOH, social media (including YouTube) and digital – is being supported by the FMCG giant’s biggest ad spend of the year.
Created in partnership with VML Spain, ‘Family Portraits’ moves away from the classic dinner table stereotypes in its latest brand push, designed to promote its new, family-size jars. Instead, it celebrates rule breakers – from nuns to nans – who are willing to defy convention as they undertake irrational acts of love for the Heinz range of pasta sauces.
Pleasingly, all the ads have been based around true stories from real-life Heinz fans.
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Live throughout September, the ads feature a rebellious nun who is willing to ‘sin’ for a hot bowl of pasta, a mischievous Nonna who breaks the status quo by feeding herself first, and a bride who’d rather wear Heinz Pasta Sauce than wear white.
“Time and time again, our fans continue to show up as our creative muse, providing rich creative territory from which we can have a lot of fun,” said Heinz head of growth and innovation, Caio Fontenele.
“And a handwritten love letter from a convent is as good as it gets! It’s these acts of irrational love that inspired our latest ad campaign which pokes fun at convention and puts people’s passion for our product on full display – in a way that only Heinz can do.”
VML Spain ECD Paco Badia added: “The new family size range deserved doubling down on humour and evolving the brand’s visual code to make room for showing unexpected families enjoying the product irresistibility, while keeping the Ridiculously Good platform ownable tone of voice.”
Kraft Heinz head of culinary tomatoes, Alessandra Sega, added: “Like our fictional Nonna, there’s a certain freedom that comes with age, and at 150 years old, we’re able to have fun with the brand, creating content for our ridiculously good pasta sauce, without being serious.”
‘Family Portraits’ is the latest in a series of recent campaigns designed to disrupt the category. This includes the recent return of Heinz X Absolut Vodka pasta sauce, which was awarded a Grand Prix at this year’s WARC awards in association with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
