Heinz

At Leo Burnett, in collaboration with our Chicago head office we won the pitch for the global Heinz business.

Over the ensuing years we created work across the brand’s Ketchup, Soups, Baby Foods, Beans and Salad Cream brands that was both business effective and creatively awarded.

Here is just some of that work.

Heinz Microwavable Soups ‘Quick’

Martin Loraine and Steve Jones wrote this clever and witty commercial to announce the arrival of Heinz 2-minute microwavable soups.

Directed by Dominic Murphy, the film won a Cannes Film Gold Lion.

Credit to our ambitious Heinz clients for buying the work.

Heinz Organic Baby Food ‘Babies’

This incredibly charming and simple campaign for Heinz Organic Baby Foods was written by Rob Nielsen and Jack Stephens and, for obvious reasons, was irresistible to our Heinz clients.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup ‘Ice Station’

My old partner, Greg Martin, now teamed with Mike McKenna, had joined me at Leo Burnett.

Greg and Mike showed us three big ideas for the new campaign for Heinz Tomato Ketchup.

I thought the idea that ‘You can’t eat without it’ was a truth (we’re like that in the UK).

Greg and Mike then wrote this dramatisation which was brilliantly realised by director Dominic Murphy and which won a Silver Lion at Cannes.

Heinz Salad Cream 

The Heinz Salad Cream brand was in trouble.

Despite its iconic status in the UK, its market share was being aggressively eroded by more modern alternatives such as mayonnaise and as a result it was languishing unloved and unused at the backs of people’s cupboards.

We proposed to Heinz that they announce to the British public that the brand was to be discontinued as we believed that this would meet with a national outcry.

In a PR dream, this is exactly what happened.

Still, though, we needed a strategy and, targeting hard-up students and majoring on the product’s unique, tangy taste, we positioned Heinz Salad Cream as being able to liven up and make more tasty even the dullest and blandest of staple foods.

Our clients bought into the strategy wholeheartedly and, knowing that this youth target was a tough one, supported some extreme work.

The campaign was written by Rob Nielsen, Jack Stephens, Adam Griffin and Rob Spicer.