Heinz Canada

The Objective

Engaging the #FoodTok community during summer grilling season

Founded in 1869, the H. J. Heinz Company is one of the world's most recognizable brands, producing some of the most enjoyed foods for all eating occasions. Heinz's beloved Tomato Ketchup is nearly 150 years old and has been an iconic category leader for decades. As part of their “The Heinz Ketchup Of…” campaign, Heinz aimed to use Heinz Ketchup’s trusted stature to encourage excitement around their entire line of condiments, ultimately owning the summer barbeque season as only they could. With TikTok’s unique and unduplicated strong community of food lovers, it was the ideal place to connect with their target audience and increase awareness of Heinz’s signature condiments when heading to the grill.

The Solution

Packing a punch of flavour with In-Feed Ads, Voting Stickers, and Creators

For generations Heinz ketchup-topped burgers have been synonymous with summer. However, Heinz has a multitude of tasty condiments available that would be sure to take any BBQ to the next level, including Heinz Mustard, Relish, Mayonnaise and Mayoracha. With that in mind, Heinz encouraged the TikTok community to reach for their favourite sauce and vote on which one to use when getting ready to grill.

First, to reach Canadian families and young adults far and wide in an authentic way, Heinz partnered with various well-known food TikTok creators to fire up their grills and get the word out. Creators like @chefdevan, @kaelahe, and @katherinewants produced custom recipes using the brand’s signature sauces, highlighting the unique flavours and versatility of the condiments. In the initial phase of the campaign, they encouraged the larger #FoodTok community to vote for which condiment they should go with by leveraging TikTok native ad solution, Voting Stickers. The Voting Sticker Interactive Add-on allows brands to add a voting topic and two options within a video ad to increase user engagement and collect information. Once the votes were in, the foodie-creators concocted one-of-a-kind mouthwatering recipes based on the winning condiment that ran during the second phase of the campaign. The creator content increased awareness of the entire line of condiments while also encouraging engagement from the community, solidifying that just like their ketchup, other Heinz condiments are the best at their game!

Meanwhile, Heinz created the perfect ad recipe to meet its awareness and engagement goals: In-Feed Ads and Custom Audiences. Heinz launched their campaign with a focus on reach, running a tasty combination of brand and creator content. For the second phase, the campaign focused on traffic, running with the Reach and Frequency objective, ensuring fixed impressions for maximum impact. The ads leveraged custom re-targeting audiences, based on users who had voted in the first phase of the campaign, to drive users to the brand's website. Custom Audiences is a TikTok solution that allows brands like Heinz to easily reach and retarget users who have engaged with their advertising content, helping to push them further down the funnel. The ad solutions generated high awareness by allowing Heinz to kick off the food campaign with high reach at scale, while also allowing the brand to put the power into the hands - and taste buds - of the TikTok users who voted!

The Results

A recipe for BBQ success

Canadians barbequed like pros with Heinz’s must-have iconic condiments at hand, as the brand whet appetites with its summer campaign and delivered epic results! Partnering with well-known food creators allowed Heinz to further associate their condiments with barbequing moments through the summer and beyond, while uniquely engaging the #FoodTok community to participate. Heinz’s food campaign successfully increased awareness and engagement, grilling up over 35.6 million total impressions and generating 118,915 total votes. Plus, the brand-led and creator In-Feed Ads served up over 33.4 million video views and managed to captivate the audience's attention upfront, garnering an impressive 14% two-second view-through rate!

Finally, a post-campaign brand lift study showed an impressive 18% increase in Ad Recall and a strong 5% growth in Brand Association, both significantly exceeding North American benchmarks. And when it came to Preference, not only did the campaign deliver, but it exceeded benchmarks by a whopping +290% - what a sizzling success!