Heinz – Draw Ketchup (Ketchup = Heinz)

The Heinz brand of tomato ketchup has some staggering market shares in some continents. In Europe, where the brand is well recognised and respected, it has an 80% market share and 60% in the US.

Many restaurants in the United States and Canada use Heinz. It was  “America’s Favourite Ketchup”

As of today, more than 650 million bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup are sold annually throughout the world.

A Mini Experiment with Massive Implications

Heinz gambled on the iconism of their signature sauce in a January 2021 experiment.

The company used the services of Canadian advertising firm Rethink to create a campaign that encouraged people in 18 different nations across five continents to “draw ketchup.”

As a result of losing ground to rivals, Heinz’s brand affinity ratings dropped, prompting the company to adopt this tactic. The campaign’s goal was to reconnect with customers on an emotional level to increase brand loyalty.

Heinz set out to learn why people automatically think of its ketchup as Heinz.

Campaign volunteers thought they were taking part in an anonymous study for a commercial. They were completely oblivious to the product’s brand.

All they were told to do was sketch whatever came to mind when they heard the term “ketchup.”

The experiment produced astonishing results. The sketches varied in quality, but they all shared one thing:

Everyone who drew ketchup chose the Heinz brand.

It was incredible to see the glass bottle, the emblem with a tomato, or even just Heinz written across the bottle.

This ad helped them illustrate a very important point: their ketchup brand is superior to all others.

Heinz used some of the doodles from the day’s social experiment in a movie posted online and shown on billboards throughout Canada.

And there was more!

Heinz wanted to get as much mileage out of their “Draw Ketchup” guerilla marketing effort as possible, so they encouraged customers to submit their pictures to DrawKetchup.ca until January 31, 2021. Those who participated in the website’s drawing contest had the opportunity to have their works featured on 250 unique Heinz bottles.

Heinz was able to cement its implicit relationship with its target demographic and prove its dominance as “America’s favourite ketchup!” thanks to the campaign.

Effectiveness

The worldwide iconoclasm of Heinz ketchup and its packaging was the focus of a guerilla marketing effort.

• The ad revealed customers’ natural and immediate link between Heinz and ketchup.
• The campaign’s video received over 47,000 views in a single day of its release online.
• 97% of those who drew ketchup drew Heinz. This demonstrated the brand’s hegemonic status in the industry.
• During the promotion, sales of Heinz ketchup jumped by 10%.
• During the campaign, the brand saw a 1,500% increase in interaction across all social media platforms.
• Business Insider, Bloomberg, FOX, and AdAge were just some of the media outlets that covered the “Draw Ketchup” campaign.
• Numerous accolades

These results and recognitions demonstrate that Heinz’s guerilla marketing technique connected with its intended demographic and helped the brand renew its emotional connection with buyers.

Follow Up

In response to the popularity of the ‘Draw Ketchup’ campaign, the company has produced a new commercial in which an AI picture generator illustrates a bottle of the condiment.

As a follow-up, it collaborated with Canadian creative firm Rethink on a project based on the concept that AI can now create graphics from text.

After being prompted to draw a “cow bus” and a “fry castle,” the audience sees the bot create what looks to be a Heinz bottle in a variety of creative styles when given the command “ketchup.”

For this study, they used DALLE 2, an artificial intelligence picture generator that draws from a database of billions of reference points, to generate images for our experiment.

The campaign was promoted using online video, social media, and an OOH activation in the heart of Toronto.