With a limited budget, the KraftHeinz team looked to make a splash with an act - not an ad, generating mass awareness through earned media. To do this, we needed to develop an activation that would drive organic conversation and deliver a strong ROI. With a pulse on conversation and deep understanding of the news cycle, the role of PR became imperative. Dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we aimed to grab journalists’ interest by tapping into this conversation in a way that stood out - breaking convention by presenting a positive narrative instead of sombre messages out in the market.

Following years of market share decline, in July 2020 Kraft Heinz Canada reinvented its entire baby food portfolio under the new Heinz by Nature brand. However, the brand needed to re-establish relevance and get expecting moms and parents to trust and try Heinz by Nature instead of well-established competitors like Gerber. Then in March 2020, the world changed. The team was tasked with finding a way to insert the brand into culture by creating something positive during a time when most brands were presenting sombre messages and imagery increasing consumer anxiety. The team was tasked to develop an earned first campaign that garnered attention across the country amassing more than 15 million earned impressions and 70% positive consumer sentiment. Aside from COVID limitations preventing a stunt or more traditional marketing efforts, we needed to act quickly to create conversation while avoiding getting lost in the holiday clutter.

The team quickly did the baby math and realized that December 18 marked exactly 9 months since the lockdown protocols went into effect and will also mark the birth of the first babies conceived during this completely unique time. Beyond this, the internet was flooded with soon-to-be-parents talking about their difficult journey and anything but normal pregnancy due to COVID restrictions. These parents sought to bring new life into the world despite so much uncertainty and hardship and for that reason, their new bundle of joy deserved to be celebrated in a unique way. To do this, Heinz By Nature created a limited edition clothing brand: The Lockdown Lovechild Collection. The collection featured witty and adorable bibs and onesies including slogans like “While you were hoarding TP my parents were making me,” and was made available free on December 18th for those babies born on the day.

To support earned outreach and to settle the ongoing debate in the media cycle of whether or not COVID-19 triggered a baby boom or a baby bust, the team commissioned a survey with Angus Reid Institute. The survey results concluded that over one third of Canadians either announced or knew someone who announced their pregnancy since Canadians first locked down in March, giving us some strong data to root our timely launch in. This finding supported all communications materials, including a press release and media pitches sent to media throughout North America.

With this data, we aimed to seed the unique and timely collection with lifestyle and news media across Canada to drive awareness among expectant parents. With the Canadian media landscape shrinking and Canadians consuming American media outlets on a large scale, we took the unique insight cross border to drive additional awareness.

To drive excitement and anticipation in advance of the December 18th due date, the baby clothing line was treated like an exclusive apparel drop. Four days in advance of launch, swag kits were created and distributed to expecting media personalities and influencers. Additionally, we engaged a group of 10 expectant parents, about to pop and who would be welcoming their own lockdown lovebaby. Each partner created adorable content driving awareness for the collection and consumers to the custom created website.

Leveraging the data and unique collection, the team conducted earned outreach with lifestyle news outlets across North America and thumb-stopping ads were created to run across the platforms frequented by our demo: Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

When the virtual doors opened on December 18th at 12 PM EST, 8,771 parents from around the globe hit our website in anticipation, we crashed the server and they were STILL gone in under 3 minutes. Due to the popularity, the team worked quickly to restock and another 12,424 parents in queue until they were all gone in under 5 minutes.

The two week campaign generated over 163 million traditional and social earned impressions from around the world; over 170 pieces of coverage in outlets such as Global News, Today’s Parent, 680 News network, Fox News and even The Polish News. The mass awareness drove over 60,000 visits to the HeinzLockdownLovebaby.com microsite with visitors from every continent in the world.

During the campaign, the brand saw a 377% increase in click-through and 380% increase in engagements with a massive shift of 100% in positive sentiment. Most importantly, immediately following campaign sales of Heinz By Nature grew by 24% and the brand achieved 14.7 market share, surpassing well-established competitors and making them the number 2 brand in the category, the highest market share position. All proof that some really cute things came from a very non-cute year.