2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Challenge
Heinz Ketchup has been a household name and a leader in the condiment category for the past 150 years. The Heinz name has become synonymous with ketchup, but being the category leader puts a target on your back. Heinz was facing new challengers and was no longer the presumptive choice for Canadians.

For the first time, they began to lose share and saw a decrease in brand affinity scores. There was genuine worry the brand in Canada could swing from iconic to old fashioned. Canadians loved Ketchup and preferred the taste of Heinz, but the brand was at risk of falling out of favour. As such, the goal framed for Rethink was to help the brand reaffirm its iconic status with Canadians.

Insight
Heinz Ketchup needed to identify relevant cultural moments befitting an iconic brand. Every winter the world turns their eyes towards Hollywood to celebrate the best and most recognizable actors and films. Rethink recognized that Heinz had been playing a role alongside those actors and in those films, yet never received the credit. Something Heinz competitors couldn’t claim.

After all, Heinz on a table isn’t a normal product placement. A diner in a movie without Heinz wouldn’t look right. For decades the brand played a role just like the other actors, appearing in countless iconic films from When Harry met Sally, to the likes of Groundhog Day and Goodfellas. It was time for the iconic glass bottle to get some credit.

Every award season a few of Hollywood’s greats get snubbed, and nobody understands that feeling more than Heinz Ketchup. With the amount of press already surrounding the Oscars every year, the goal was to find a way to get consumers to get involved with the brand’s consideration campaign.

Execution
Days before the season’s biggest awards show Heinz created its own page on the internet’s official actor database, IMDb, to get in the credits for all of the movies they’ve ever been in, something no brand had ever attempted before. But it was shut down. That’s right, Heinz Ketchup got snubbed just like “the Sandman” in 2020. Heinz needed to quickly pivot the campaign and needed Canada’s (and the world’s) help.

Taking action to prove its credibility as an actor, Heinz launched a video on social calling on all Canadians to find movies featuring Heinz and credit it in the comments.

Ultimately, this created a new movie database out of the Heinz social feed, sourced entirely by consumers. The first 1,000 commenters received free ketchup and further engagement was fuelled by interacting in real-time with people, crafting custom responses that mimicked the movies they spotted Heinz Ketchup in. The campaign reaction was so overwhelming that Heinz decided to double the giveaway.

Results
Heinz Ketchup instigated the exact social conversation that it had hoped for. With 52X the average social engagement for this campaign, the “Heinz on Film” push drove more traffic on social than it ever would have achieved on IMDb. Additionally, positive brand sentiment increased by 350%, and the push increased household penetration, all while earning $155,000 USD worth of media during one of the buzziest weeks of the year. Turns out getting snubbed during the Oscars is not so bad after all.

Credits

CCO: Aaron Starkman
ECD: Mike Dubrick
CSO: Sean McDonald
Head of Art: Joel Holtby
Creative Director: Mike Dubrick, Nicolas Quintal
Art Director: Hayley Hinkley, Mathieu Lacombe, Maxime Sauté
Writer: Jacquelyn Parent, Vanessa Harbec, Xavier Blais
Illustrator: Erin Maguire
Strategist: Julian Morgan, Sean McDonald
Producer: Anna Tricinci, Spencer Houghton
Editor: Stephen Parker
Post Production House: R+D Productions
On-Line: R+D Productions
Audio House: Vapor RMW
Audio Engineer: Art Mullin
Account Director: Amy Greenspoon
Account Director: Kai de Bryun Kops
Account Manager: Sarah Shiff