food and beverages

Big-Spending Kraft Launches 'It Has To Be Heinz'

While people have been eating Heinz products for over 150 years, the global brand has never had a single creative platform. It does now, with the launch of Kraft Heinz's new "It has to be Heinz" campaign.

The company says the campaign, backed by Kraft Heinz's biggest media budget ever, will celebrate the "unmatched love that generations of people all over the world have for Heinz."

A spokesperson says the company decided on a unified, media-heavy approach to fuel revenue gains. "We saw an opportunity to take the Heinz brand to the next level and set it up to help usher in the next wave of global growth," she tells Marketing Daily via email. "We have big ambitions to grow the Heinz brand and business over the next 10 years. Heinz will be one of the leading forces of growth for Kraft Heinz, both now and in the long term."

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Wieden + Kennedy created the global platform in five vignette-style spots designed to show off fan love stories. In the launch ad, there are ketchup tattoos, widows slipping ketchup into caskets, and cute kids putting it on ice cream. Then there's ketchup on sushi, hotel mini-bottle heists and a mighty eccentric collector.

The ads are sourced from social media, including Reddit and TikTok, news articles, and through word of mouth and observed behaviors.

The W+K team loved not having to make anything up. "Heinz pops up everywhere, from glove compartments to rockstars' riders, the TSA's most-confiscated-items list, and even the International Space Station," says Marc Duran, associate creative ACD, Wieden + Kennedy. "Once you start tuning in to those irrational true stories, they just keep pouring in."

Ads are running on television and online video.

The effort launches as the Kraft-Heinz turnaround story continues to gain traction, much of it buoyed by heavy marketing and product innovation investments. While inflationary headwinds, including problems with commodities, labor, packaging and logistics, "beleaguering its consumer product peers, Kraft Heinz appears to be taking these pressures in stride," writes Erin Lash, an analyst who covers the company for Morningstar.

"It isn't relenting on its focus to more effectively fuel marketing spending, targeting a 30% increase in marketing between fiscal 2020 and 2024," she says.

The new campaign is part of that focus, the spokesperson tells Marketing Daily via email. "Kraft Heinz's ambition is to lead the future of food, and Heinz's new creative platform is the latest example of Kraft Heinz's marketing and creative evolution -- a critical driver of the company's ongoing transformation."

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