It costs millions to be a World Cup sponsor, so what do you do if you’re that iconic brand, Heinz, but with a limited budget? You Heinzjack it. You find someone called Heinz, give them a flight and free match tickets, and send them off to the World Cup with nothing but a camera, a t-shirt with a printed QR code, control of your brand pages, prizes for fans and a healthy dose of stoic determination. This original and innovative strategy enabled Heinz to reach over 7m football fans, generate over 14m impressions and earn over $450,000 in media coverage.

To officially sponsor the World Cup would cost anywhere between $10m to $25m (Source: Nasdaq). The average cost-per-click during the World Cup increased between three and six times (Source: Meta), and the cost of an out-of-home site in Qatar shot up by 1000% (Source: UM 2022). With a projected reach of 5.4bn people, some might say it’s a small price to pay, especially if you’re a food brand that needs to be top-of-mind during the year’s busiest trading months. But just because you’re one of the most iconic brands in the world doesn’t mean you have the biggest budget in the world, so this brief was about delivering maximum impact for minimum cost.

Our goal was to make Heinz part of the football conversation, as measured through online engagement rates, media coverage and interaction between Heinz – the billboard, and fans.

Historically, food and snacking consumption levels increase during a World Cup, sometimes by as much as 5%, especially in host nations (Source: Retail Week). And it’s the brands that are most aligned with the event that reap the rewards as sponsorships can increase purchase intent for that sponsor by 10% (Source: Nielsen Sports). The challenge for Heinz Arabia was to capitalize on this opportunity by making it feel like a World Cup sponsor, without being a World Cup sponsor. However, in terms of marketing budgets it was the San Marino of international football, so we had to change the way we approached the brief, we needed a flash of brilliance: we needed an iconic idea that would nutmeg FIFA and blindside officials.

How could we align Heinz Arabia with the spectacle of the World Cup without buying costly media? This was the question we asked ourselves over and over, again and again.

Then, in a moment of Maradona-like genius, we made a breakthrough: brands have been gatecrashing sporting events since forever without arising suspicion or scrutiny…they’ve been hiding in plain sight on the clothes people wear. Who’s going to stop you wearing Nikes at an adidas sponsored event or Raybans at a Revo one? This was our hand of God moment. This was the way we could get Heinz into the World Cup.

Instead of hijacking the event, we Heinzjacked it. The brand couldn’t be there, but someone called Heinz could. So that’s what we did.

We found our namesake, Thomas Heinz from Hamburg. He would engage with fans and create world cup content for the brand in exchange for free flights and tickets to the matches. He became a human billboard that proudly displayed his name, Heinz, next to a huge QR-code that incentivized other fans to interact, engage and find him in a kind of “Where’s Wally” style competition.

Thomas Heinz, our human billboard, became a memorable part of the World Cup and helped make Heinz a memorable partner to the World Cup. Unofficially. For an extremely low budget the brand was able to:

- Reach over 7 million people

- Generate 14m impressions across the various content pieces

- Deliver over 70% engagement

- Give out thousands of prizes to fans

- Earn over $450,000 worth of media coverage which equated to an unprecedented Media ROI of 45:1

Given the massive reach of the FIFA World Cup, brands spend millions on sponsorship rights for a place in the spotlight. For brands outside that list of sponsors, it's extremely hard to address the event and take advantage of the momentum due to the strict legal regulations. Heinz Arabia wasn't an official sponsor and had a tight budget, but it took a smart idea to be present in the event and interact with fans.

By turning Thomas Heinz into a Heinz billboard, we were able to create some iconic content for the brand. And it cost no more than $10,000:

$3,000 agency fees; content and asset creation, social media monitoring

$5,000 travel costs; flights, accommodation and match tickets for 3 games

$1,985 prizes; fan giveaways

$15 Heinz Branded t-shirt