Jim Bosilijevac/Leo Burnett/CopywriterKevin Butler/Leo Burnett/Art Director Take a commodity product with little innovation and no newly defined benefit and produce significant volume growth with a very limited budget. Reveal the brand personality in a provocative manner.Create forethought for an afterthought product. The core idea was to reach and impact teens by leveraging an established icon in an unexpected way. The “Talking Label” bottles:1. Build a personality for the brand2. Speak to teens in their language3. Provide a consistent branding presence.We knew that if we were going to reach a notoriously elusive and savvy young market, we would need to connect with them on terms with extroverted presence - on TV, in magazines, beside grills, and in grocery aisles. When you think about getting to know a person, you’re introduced to them, and each subsequent encounter builds on that initial meeting. We employed the same thinking to build a personality for Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Teens would “meet” the Heinz bottle and then each contact would reveal a different aspect of its personality.The bottle would become a “talk piece” among friends as they socialized over a plate of fries. The brand would become a “talk piece,” a conversation topic, and part of the bonding experiences of teens – in other words, a quirky friend that made witty statements. The Heinz “Talking Label” emerged amidst the collaboration of the media and brand teams, as they cohesively evaluated the nature of their brand’s approach. Through a brand contact audit, the agency set out to identify ways to reach teens in order to further develop a meaningful connection with the Heinz brand.The contact audit aided in identifying experiences through which teens would encounter the brand in their habits and lifestyles. Furthermore, the exercise weighed both the efficiency and impact of youth contact in general. As the team progressed, the Heinz bottle continuously arose as the most direct means of brand contact with teens in their element. Heinz ketchup bottles are absolutely everywhere – in refrigerators, on diner tables, and next to grills. Heinz ketchup bottles have been a ubiquitous icon in American life for the past century. The brilliance of this idea is that it harnesses the presence and icon status of the product packaging and expands upon it with an authentic and engaging brand persona. By developing the icon into the medium of the message, we were able to provide the brand with broad-reaching contact.This icon bottle represents a media first with truly innovative use of packaging unparalleled by any other brand. We took a traditional commodity product with no new benefit and injected life into it by creating a unique quirky, self-confident voice. It talked about rational product application in an emotional way that simply connected with people. And teens noticed. They liked what the bottle had to say and began demanding the talking persona. Retailers had a hard time keeping it on the shelf, and consumers began collecting the bottles; everybody wanted to hear what Heinz Ketchup had to say.

The Heinz “Talking Label” emerged amidst the collaboration of the media and brand teams, as they cohesively evaluated the nature of their brand’s approach. Through a brand contact audit, the agency set out to identify ways to reach teens in order to further develop a meaningful connection with the Heinz brand.The contact audit aided in identifying experiences through which teens would encounter the brand in their habits and lifestyles. Furthermore, the exercise weighed both the efficiency and impact of youth contact in general. As the team progressed, the Heinz bottle continuously arose as the most direct means of brand contact with teens in their element.