2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Heinz is a cultural icon that’s known all over the world. It’s THE original ketchup and has been for over 150 years.

While being so well established has its perks, it can make it difficult for the brand to stay relevant, particularly with younger audiences. Food innovations dominate the conversation and competitors challenge us on price, meaning they need to continuously reassert their iconic status to remain top of mind. As Super Bowl 57 approached, their goal was to earn attention and remind the world that Heinz is THE ketchup.

Heinz has a proud legacy of leveraging their iconic brand assets in their advertising. And Super Bowl 57 was a perfect cultural moment to leverage one of its most enduring ones: the number 57. Heinz’s 57 is trademarked, it’s on every bottle, and it’s part of what makes Heinz, Heinz.

But without spending millions to be an official Super Bowl sponsor they couldn’t air a TV ad, or even say “NFL” or “Super Bowl.” And there was another problem — The NFL uses LVII, the Roman Numeral version of 57, not 57 itself. It was set to be Super Bowl 57 without a “57” in sight — just millions of “LVII”s.

But through social listening one thing became clear: nobody actually understands Roman numerals or why the NFL uses them. This lack of comprehension gave Heinz their role to play in this cultural moment. Using their 57 brand asset, they would clear up the confusion, and insert Heinz into one of the biggest events of the year.

They launched “LVII Meanz 57” — Heinz’s unofficial Super Bowl campaign explaining what LVII means, and rallying football fans everywhere to just say 57 instead.

Leading up to the Super Bowl, they kicked off with their hero asset — a man-on-the-street style video that put real people to the test and asked them if they knew the meaning of LVII. And unsurprisingly, almost nobody did.

The campaign then spread their “LVII Meanz 57” message through social, influencers, targeted OOH and earned media. They also developed IG and Snapchat stickers that turned every LVII into a 57.And they asked people to vote on LVII vs. 57. Not surprisingly, everyone agreed — Just Say 57.

On Super Bowl Sunday, they announced their winning vote tally on social and on Super Boards surrounding the Super Bowl stadium, where football fans couldn’t miss it.

The campaign was an immediate success, receiving coverage from ABC, USA Today, Yahoo!, The Drum, Fox, AdWeek and AdAge. It garnered nearly 500M impressions, received 100% positive/neutral PR sentiment, and drove a 304% increase in web traffic. In the first 24 hours their microsite received 11,000 votes on LVII vs. 57, and their organic launch post doubled their brand’s social engagement rate benchmark. On IG their hero video had a completion rate 20% above benchmarks and an engagement rate 49% above. Their creator content exceeded social benchmarks by 200%. And purchase consideration for Heinz reached its highest level in over a year.

In the end, Heinz seamlessly inserted itself into the Super Bowl conversation, creating a campaign that cost $7 million less than an official commercial yet was successfully listed as a top Super Bowl ad.

Credits

Chief Creative Officer: Aaron Starkman, Mike Dubrick
Chief Strategy Officer: Sean McDonald
Executive Creative Director: Xavier Blais
Creative Director: Zachary Bautista
Associate Creative Director : Geoff Baillie, Karine Doucet
Writer : Geoff Baillie, Phil Coulter, Charles Côté
Art Director : Zachary Bautista, Stefan D'Aversa
Strategist: Julian Morgan, Emma Bayfield
Producers: Nadya MacNeil, Kate Spencer
Post Supervisors: Megan O’Connor, Shannon Ing
Digital / Print Producer: Kate Spencer
Studio: Brad Kumar, Justin Chan, Kostas Loukopoulos
Group Business Lead: Adam Ball
Group Account Director: Jamie Sutherland
Account Director: David Greisman, Catherine Blouin-Mainville
Account Supervisor: Jamie Flatow
Account Manager: Rachel Cloth
Director / Photographer: Tessa Greenberg
Cinematographer: Chloe Smolkin
Production Companies.: R+D Productions / MT Vernon Entertainment
EP/Line Producer: Steph Walker-Wells, Ken Franchi
Editor: Nick Greaves
Online / VFX / Motion Graphics: Ignacio Florez
Color / Audio : R+D Post
Media: Carat, Starcom
Printing House: Italic Printing
PR: Zeno Group
EVP, Head of Integrated Communications: Missy Maher
Senior Vice President: Jamie Dammrich
Senior Vice President: Heather Meehan
Vice President: Alyssa Winkler
SVP, Media Strategy: Courtney Pischke
Account Supervisor: Bethany Stokoski
Senior Account Director: David Dwyer
SAE, Media Relations: Veronica Smith

Client:
Head of Brand Comms North America: Nina Patel
Director, Brand Comms: Megan Lang
Sr. Brand Manager: Jacqueline Chao
Brand Manager: Alyssa Cicero