For the past 150 years, Heinz Ketchup has been a household name and a leader in the condiment category. However, being in the leadership position comes with the risk of becoming complacent. And with new competition entering the market, Heinz was no longer the obvious choice for Canadians. They began to loose share, brand affinity scores were down, and there was a real chance the brand could go from iconic, to old fashioned. People loved the product and the taste, but were falling out of love with the brand.

Our objective for 2019 was to cement ourselves as an iconic brand both in Canada and globally.

We changed the iconic Heinz Ketchup glass bottle with the iconic label repositioned at an exact angle of 31° - the angle that best allows the ketchup to pour easily from the bottle. We placed the bottles in store and in restaurants. Not only did the bottles give Canadians the answer they’d been after for decades, the tilted angle of the label created a breakthrough design on cluttered grocery store shelves where attention is at a premium.

We scoured the internet for inspiration using social listening to better understand current consumer insights around Heinz. And one thing quickly stood out: people are still trying to figure out the best way to get Heinz Ketchup out of the glass bottle.

Searching for “The best way to get ketchup out of the bottle” yields over 74 million results. News sites, blogs and youtube videos gave familiar tips like shaking, knife-poking and tapping the 57. We decided that after 150 years, it was time to break the silence and officially tell people the best way to pour Heinz Ketchup.

We kicked off the Pour Perfectly activation in-store on August 13th, 2019. Campaign video followed shortly after and ran in social September 4th to October 4th, 2019. The campaign also consisted of a targeted earned media outreach strategy - that captured global attention. It was such a success that the spot ran during the Super Bowl in 2020.

The campaign launched on social and immediately generated buzz. Within a few weeks, the Pour Perfect Bottle was picked up by over 340 news stations globally, including notable outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Ad Age and New York Daily News. Worldwide search interest for Heinz Ketchup increased by 400%. The campaign garnered 238 million over earned media impressions. All the earned attention paid off as we saw our brand affinity score jump +3%, we stole share from competitors by +2.8%, and saw a sales lift of +11%, reversing 16 quarters of decline.