We were speaking to younger Heinz consumers, those that were buying a host of different sauces, but not looking to Heinz to fulfil this need.

We identified that within this demographic, food rules were less traditional and more experimental. They were interested in trying all sorts of sauces, in all sorts of combinations. They weren’t afraid of the unknown. In fact they sought the unknown, at least within their food and sauce consumption habits.

Background: 

Whilst Heinz is known for being experts in making Tomato Ketchup and Seriously Good Mayonnaise, we also have a delicious range of 14 Flavoured Sauces across modern condiments, flavoured mayonnaise and flavoured ketchups, from Garlic and Burger Sauce to Truffle Mayo and Pickle Ketchup. 

However despite having such an extensive range, awareness and penetration of our Flavours is significantly lower when compared to our core products, with many consumers we interviewed in the UK not even aware that we had anything beyond Ketchup & Mayonnaise. So we wanted to develop a disruptive campaign to help put our full range of Flavours on the map amongst a younger target audience (18-44) who are over-indexing in Flavours.

Something needed to be done. We were tasked to create a communications idea that would bring awareness, talkability and excitement of this range of unknown Flavours in a way that would resonate with a new generation of sauce shoppers and reinforce that we are so much more than just core ketchup and mayonnaise.

Creative idea:

To prove our obsession with sauces, and create excitement around the full Flavours range, we decided to do what we do best at Heinz - create another sauce. 

Made at our pilot plant in Nijmegen, this sauce would be unlike any other before it, combining not one, not two but 14 delicious sauces making up the Heinz Flavours range, the ‘Holy Grail’ of sauces. Fittingly it would be named: Heinz Every Sauce (well, almost). 

We created a first-of-its-kind scratchable label which revealed the list of sauces making up ‘Every Sauce’.

If we were making a product, then it deserved to be launched properly. So we set about teasing the arrival of Every Sauce with cryptic executions in social, before launching into a full campaign. 

With only 100 bottles of Heinz Every Sauce available to consumers, we wanted to make sure that they ended up in the right hands. So we created a microsite where only those most obsessed with sauces, or ‘obsauced’ as we like to say, could enter a competition to win a bottle.

Select influencers also played their role, who were given their own bottle of Every Sauce to review and spread the word about Heinz’s latest invention. 

Insights & Strategy:

We wanted to show that we, like our audience, were sauce obsessed. We could prove it on paper, with our huge range of sauces - more than any other brand. However, one of the big problems in having a large Flavours range is making any one product stand out. And we didn’t have a lot of media budget to rely on traditional messaging for the whole range - we needed a different approach to cut through.

So instead of picking 1 or 2 sauces to focus our support behind, we chose to embrace and elevate this portfolio of sauces to turn a perceived weakness into Heinz’s greatest strength: no other brand could boast such a large range of flavours, and no other brand has been so experimental with its offering. It was in fact, our competitive advantage. And a proof that we, like our audience, were sauce obsessed.

We wanted to bring this to life in a way that would resonate with our sauce obsessed audience. What better way to do it, than make another sauce, made of all the sauces? This would not only appeal to the audience, but also acted as a vessel to communicate the many sauces that we sold.

In choosing to create social-first hype around the launch of a real product in Every Sauce, we believed that this would be a more effective way to get a younger generation of shoppers to stand up and take notice.

Execution:

We created a first-of-its-kind scratchable label which revealed the list of sauces making up ‘Every Sauce’.

If we were making a product, then it deserved to be launched properly. So we set about teasing the arrival of Every Sauce with cryptic executions in social, before launching into a full campaign. 

With only 100 bottles of Heinz Every Sauce available to consumers, we wanted to make sure that they ended up in the right hands. So we created a microsite where only those most obsessed with sauces, or ‘obsauced’ as we like to say, could enter a competition to win a bottle.

Select influencers also played their role, who were given their own bottle of Every Sauce to review and spread the word about Heinz’s latest invention. 

Thiago Rapp, Director of Taste Elevation at Heinz said,

“Over the years, we’ve been constantly innovating to meet culinary tastes and trends, and when it comes to sauces at Heinz we can’t deny we’re sauce obsessed. It only felt right to find those out there who are just as obsauced as we are and give them the ultimate sauce to rule them all. If you don’t manage to get your hands on a limited-edition bottle, don’t worry you can experiment with your own version at home using your favourites from the Heinz Flavours range!”

“It's no secret that people go to irrational lengths for Heinz. So, our creative team came up with a mad idea: what if we create a sauce made up of all Heinz Sauces? Innovation is at the core of what Heinz does, and 'Every Sauce' is a perfect example of how Heinz uses creativity with consumers' love for its products in mind,” said Juan Sevilla and Joe De Souza, Creative Directors, Wieden+Kennedy London.

“Showcasing Heinz's extensive range of sauces and giving them the spotlight was a delicious challenge. It's not every day you get to create a new sauce for Heinz, especially one that combines all fourteen of their flavours into one. Even crazier? It's actually really tasty—Liam's already on his fourth bottle,” added Charlie Hood and Liam Abraham, Creatives, Wieden+Kennedy London.

Results:

Every Sauce grew from a clever piece of advertising to a viral hit that captured the internet’s appetite. Although this was a UK campaign, such was the success of Every Sauce that it could not be contained and it attracted global attention.

The campaign was a huge success on Heinz’ owned social media channels: here Every Sauce blew the usual benchmarks out of the water, generating over 3.5M impressions across 16 social posts with more than 226K engagements.

However, where this campaign truly shows its value is the value of earned media it was able to generate for Heinz. Managed by Wonderland Comms, the campaign created over 200M global media impressions featuring in a host of UK national publications including The Mirror and Metro, plus Gen Z favourites like JOE and Pubity, and trade titles such as PRWeek and Famous Campaigns. We saw huge international appetite in the US with coverage in trend-focused titles such as Hypebeast and Trend Hunter and features on broadcasters such as ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX. Perhaps the ultimate proof of a transatlantic breakthrough; Every Sauce had its own segment on the popular ‘The Late Show’ with Stephen Colbert.

That’s not all, the competition giveaway generated 62,000 sign-ups for only 100 products - the demand was through the roof. We know this interest was real, because we saw some winners were listing their prize on eBay for as much as £800 a piece. 

What began as a campaign to create more awareness for an unknown range of sauces, truly became something more impactful. Through Every Sauce, our range of Flavours became a topic of conversation in TikTok comments all the way through to late night television across the Atlantic.