Heinz Ketchup is known the world over for its slow pouring ketchup. But the brand was in danger of becoming seen as old and nostalgic in addition to facing competition from new category entrants. As a result, the brand started to see brand affinity scores decline as competitors stole share. For the first time ever, people were questioning whether Heinz was for them.

Our objective was to re-evaluate all of our brand owned properties to create relevancy and cement the brand’s iconic status by re-igniting the emotional connection Heinz has with consumers in culture. We sought to stay top of mind by instigating conversation and reinforcing our iconic status as the #1 Ketchup.

We turned Heinz.com into a brand experience - making it the world’s slowest website. Heinz is famous for “Slow”. Demonstrated in iconic ads for years. But websites are about speed. Everything online fast. So, when we needed to refresh Heinz.com and Heinz.ca, we saw an opportunity. A brand website should embody the essence of the brand, but we realized, we don’t need an “our story” or “history” section to do it. So we went against every website best practice and made our website the slowest in the world. When consumers visited Heinz.com, they were greeted with a loading page. No other messaging other than a Heinz logo, and “loading…” The didn’t load for 57 minutes. (A nod to Heinz’s famous “57 varieties”). For consumers willing to wait (most did), once loaded, we showed them that good things are worth waiting for - giving them free Heinz ketchup.

Heinz has been a category leader for decades, but the brand was in danger of losing its iconic status - becoming old/nostalgic. The brand needed to find new ways to remain relevant in an ever changing technological world. But in the online space, being the fastest is best. And Heinz, is famously slow. So, we needed to find a way to bring some relevance to the brand so that all ketchup lovers, new or old, could engage with us.

Rather than avoid our greatest brand attribute, we embraced “Slow” on our website as a way to differentiate ourselves from the competition. “Slow” allowed us not just to have a product/history/our story based website like so many other brands, “slow” let us turn our site into a brand experience that focussed on what people love us for. With this insight we created an engaging experience that only Heinz could.

Heinz launched the world’s slowest website. Users who logged on to Heinz.com or Heinz.ca were greeted with a simple Heinz logo on a red background and a message that only read ‘LOADING…’. No further prompts or messages. We gamified the official Heinz website to test users’ patience, (because all good things take time). If they waited an agonizing 57 minutes, the website finally appeared, and fans were rewarded with free Heinz Ketchup.

We promoted the website through social on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, as well as OOH. The creative showcased iconic images of ‘slow’, such as the hourglass cursor, the never-ending spinning wheel, and the texting bubble. The copy reminded consumers ‘If you have to wait, it has to be Heinz’.

Originally launched as a two week campaign, the site drove so much traffic and proved so popular that the loading page is now permanent on Heinz.ca

Despite going against all digital best practices, our extremely slow website was a huge success. Overall wait time on the site in just the first few days amounted to 1,056,499 minutes (that’s 733 days waited). The campaign drew more traffic to Heinz.com than any other time in the brand’s history. Not only did consumers love it, but the mainstream press actually talked about a company website on the news. The campaign garnered 186.3 million earned impressions in three days, well surpassing both the industry norms and our own expectations. Turns out being slow on the internet, delivers fast results.