Power to the people / Heinz Ketchup put pressure on Turkish restaurants to purchase and stock authentic Heinz by getting customers to call them out. When we spoke with Mike Dubrick, chief creative officer at Canadian agency Rethink, about Heinz Ketchup’s Ketchup Fraud campaign, he said: ‘Consumer demand is really what drives interest for restaurants to carry the product, and Ketchup Fraud finds a way to create consumer demand in the eyes of the restaurateurs, so that these business owners see the value of the Heinz brand and not just ketchup as a commodity.’ By giving restaurant-goers a fun and PR-able tool to detect Heinz Ketchup imposters, restaurants have nowhere to hide. The initiative empowers people to search for authentic Heinz Ketchup, increasing its value and urging restaurants to fill their ketchup bottles with the real deal.
Fun and games / In our Heinz Ketchup Brand Spotlight, Dubrick told us, ‘The challenge is [to prevent] Heinz going from an iconic brand to fading into old fashioned nostalgia. We really want to make sure we don’t become a brand you remember from being a kid. We want to be relevant for people now and today.’ He adds, ‘If you don’t act like an icon, then that status slowly erodes over time.’ Heinz masters the art of staying relevant by motivating its fans to have fun and engage with the brand. It demonstrates its confidence through campaigns like Tip for Heinz, Heinz Hidden Spots and Draw Ketchup, which are built on people’s love for the brand – and Is That Heinz? is no exception. Here, rather than communicating directly with Turkish restaurants, Heinz flashes its icon status by using the customers themselves to show restaurant owners that they can’t fool Heinz fans when it comes to ketchup.
