Ridiculously Late – But Ridiculously Good

Challenge

After growing tomatoes for 150 years, Heinz launched its first tomato sauce for pasta in the United Kingdom – a sauce conceived to top a tough category, with scant differentiation and where price is the main driver. In other words, we had to launch a product that was not the cheapest in a category where price was king. Therefore, we decided to break with the category codes, creating a different narrative for our sauce.

Inspiration

Rather than focusing on the price, its qualities, or our considerable experience growing tomatoes (which really is extent), we decided to focus on a truth that was highly impactful in and of itself: we were late to compete in this category. 150 years late, to be precise. So, we decided to be completely honest with consumers and tell them about it. As simple as that.

Idea

Heinz’s first pasta sauce came late to the game. Very late. In fact, so late it became ridiculous. And so emerged the concept “Ridiculously late. Ridiculously good”, a concept that we took to its ultimate conclusions: showing how slow to the punch Heinz’s employees had been, apologizing to its founder for having made this terrible mistake, and, for the first time, presenting a new product as something totally ridiculous.

Growth

While the campaign was on air sales increased by 80%. The brand reached the top 25% of the category sales in a leading establishment. The campaign also strongly impacted on brand engagement, doubling the weekly average of reviews. It also boosted purchase intent: 62% of UK consumers said they were willing to buy the sauce after being impacted by the campaign, according to market research conducted by Tapresearch.