• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer, Yesterday

When the New York Islanders scored a goal at UBS Arena on April 3, something unusual happened in the stands. Alongside the horns, the chants, and the thunder of 17,000 pairs of stomping feet, a small red device filled with strawberry-colored gelatin began to wobble.

Meet the Jell-Ometer, a proprietary instrument the dessert brand invented to convert crowd noise and vibration into real-time Jell-O Jiggles, or Js, on a scale of one to ten. At the Islanders game, the device hit 8.4 Js during a goal celebration.

The question of whether it's possible to reach 10 remains open.

"We haven't gotten it to a 10 in a crowd yet," says Kathryn O'Brien, head of marketing for desserts at Kraft Heinz. (When it finally happens, though, she doesn’t think the mold will explode.)

The Jell-Ometer works, more or less, like a decibel meter that has been given a physical body. A plate-sensing mechanism captures atmospheric sound pressure from crowd noise and converts it into mechanical motion, which agitates the gelatin sitting on top. The louder and more vibrating the room, the more the Jell-O jiggles — visibly, in real time, in a seat in the stands. "While a traditional decibel meter tells you how loud something is, the Jell-Ometer shows you what that energy feels like," O'Brien tells CPG Insider.

The agency behind the product is GUT Miami. O'Brien describes the brief that led to it as a collaborative session around Jell-O's brand assets: the iconic jiggle, its natural home at tailgates and sports spreads, and the unsettled question of which fanbase is actually the loudest. "We own the jiggle — it's been around for 125 years," she says. "We tried to take that and engage with people in a way that made it fun and brought something new to life in the sports environment."

A rejected early concept involved a life-size Jell-O blob, maybe a person or a truck encased in a giant mold. "Fun, but too difficult,” O'Brien says. The Jell-Ometer, by comparison, felt both technically achievable and authentically on-brand. "It doesn't take sides," she says of the device. "It just measures the madness."

The activation fits within a broader pivot at Kraft Heinz, which has moved away from traditional sponsorships in favor of what it calls cultural participation. Within the last year, Ore-Ida became the most engaging brand during March Madness 2025 with a fraction of conventional ad spend; Kraft Heinz signed on as the official condiment of the NFL; and Oscar Mayer revived the Wienie 500, which drove the brand's best Memorial Day weekend sales in four years. The Jell-Ometer is the latest proof point in that strategy.

For Jell-O specifically, the timing is deliberate. The gelatin business has faced headwinds, and the brand is ramping up spend as part of a $600 million Kraft Heinz investment announcement. O'Brien says the dry powder business — the actual boxes of flavored gelatin — is growing.

One reason is social media’s endless recipe creativity: Jell-O in a Ninja Creami, Jell-O stirred into cookie dough, Jell-O poured into football-shaped molds for a tailgate spread. "There's a lot of new behavior from a versatility and recipe standpoint," she says. The social strategy has been to amplify what consumers are already doing, surfacing organic user content alongside creator-led recipes, leaning into gelatin as an ingredient.

The Jell-Ometer, currently singular, will travel. Jell-O has posted a call on its social channels asking fans to nominate where it should go next, which arenas, which rivalries, which crowds think they can max out the scale. O'Brien says the team is watching to see what happens organically before deciding whether to expand the fleet. "Let's get this thing out there," she says. "Let's see if people get excited about the concept and the idea."

Hockey was chosen for the debut because hockey crowds are known for their decibel output. Whether basketball, football, or a college rivalry game can push past 8.4 Js remains to be determined. The device has engineers on call in case anything technically goes wrong.

Does the Jell-Ometer have legs beyond a single viral moment? O'Brien doesn't oversell it. "That's not our intention," she says. "Right now we want to see the organic, natural reaction from fans." Which is, in a way, exactly what the device is measuring.