When people think of ketchup, almost inevitably they think Heinz. Even if Heinz ketchup isn’t the brand you have in your fridge or your favorite. Everything from the shape of the bottle to the label are part of that collective consciousness that an established brand brings to the table.

Heinz Canada wanted to engage consumers in a new and unique way, leveraging social media and a multichannel campaign giving them a chance to win a customized bottle of Heinz ketchup. To do this Heinz asked followers to submit a drawing of ketchup via a Heinz microsite that is linked to their Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. In addition, Heinz turned to outdoor with strategically placed billboards in Canadian cities.

On the social media sites, Heinz Canada posted a short video showing the experiment featuring people drawing ketchup. The result in the video, pretty much everyone drew Heinz ketchup. The video includes the hashtag #drawketchup and a link back to the microsite where budding ketchup artists can share their masterpieces through January 31st. 250 people will be selected and receive a custom box and bottle with their drawing on it.

This campaign uses the power of Heinz iconography that is known world wide to not only promote the product, but as an opportunity to gather more first party data. The latter which is definitely a larger priority for brands these days that might be losing losing access to audience tracking methods like third-party cookies and device identifiers.

One unique aspect to the campaign itself is the fact that entrants aren’t required to share their artwork on social media for a chance to win. This probably means that the campaign has less of a chance of going viral like other hashtag challenges that you see on popular platforms like TikTok Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Consumer engagement has become a bigger challenge for Heinz in recent campaigns. in 2020 Heinz ran a campaign that asked users to share TikTok videos of Halloween preparations for a chance to win a bottle of its limited-release Heinz Tomato Blood Ketchup. This was tied to the hashtag #HeinzHalloween hashtag which had generated 4.8 billion views os of January 25, 2021.

All of this comes as Heinz continues to see a downturn in sales in Canada which is contrast to sales in both U.S. markets and internationally. Hopefully this will help rebuild momentum for the brand in Canada. What will be really interesting to see if they do any follow up to this and release the data on how many people drew and submitted a Heinz bottle versus the competition.