• by Erik Oster , January 25, 2024

Nobody likes to wait. So when people are willing to hold off until they have the right condiment, it shows they don’t view it as incidental to their meal.

Heinz’s new “The Wait” campaign salutes such fans, who’d rather wait than dig into a plate of fries, burger, or other staple without the ketchup staple they view as obligatory. Launching across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Chile, UAE, and Brazil, the campaign derived from insights unearthed by global Toluna survey of 2,706 people underscoring the degree to which the brand’s fans will postpone their meal rather than eat without ketchup.

The survey found that 68% of diners said that they’d prefer waiting to eating without ketchup, even if the delay resulted in cold food, and that 55% of respondents were willing to wait even longer for Heinz Tomato Ketchup in particular. One fifth of these Heinz diehards said they’d be willing to wait up to 10 minutes for their bottle of ketchup, and  nearly a third (32%) cited three minutes as their maximum wait time -- still enough time for those fries to get cold. U.S. consumers were even more willing to wait, with 85% saying they’d hold out for their condiment of choice, and 61% holding off for Heinz in particular.

To bring the idea to life, Heinz worked with Chilean creative agency 1984 to create portraits of devoted diners in waiting, with an empty space where their ketchup should be. Running across platforms including film, digital, and OOH, the brand partnered with Dentsu media agency Carat. Utilizing contextual creative for the OOH components, the ads will greet consumers who are in the middle of waiting themselves, via placements in office lobby and elevator screens, and street furniture placements in high-traffic hotspots in Chicago hotspots, as well as further contextual placements across other global markets including London, Paris, and Santi. 

The effort is the latest iteration of the global “It Has To Be Heinz” platform the brand introduced last year, and marks the first global campaign since the unifying brand platform emphasizing fans’ “irrational love’ for Heinz was introduced.