THE CHALLENGE

Heinz Ketchup, one of America’s most popular and enduring brands, needed to own their role as the category leader. On Facebook, they were being overly promotional and brand-centric, instead of audience focused. They needed an authentic social voice to help them engage in an a natural 2-way dialogue with fans, who consistently demonstrate a genuine passion for the brand.

 

OUR APPROACH

Our approach to swinging the sentiment back into Heinz’s favor was to focus on the fans, and the fans’ passion for the brand. We worked with the brand to re-discover their confidence and swagger as an American icon. We leveraged fans’ true use and love for the brand via social listening and current events. And we implemented these changes in the context of best practice community management, engagement, and targeting, to both drive engagement and build the fan-base. Finally, we employed a 2-step social test-and-learn, where were tested our strategic approach using old creative to measure the differences.

THE RESULTS

We tested the new strategy and tone simply by repurposing old posts with updated copywriting and strategic targeting. The results told us that Heinz was on the right track: old posts with updated tone saw engagement lifts as high as 65%. So, we moved into phase two of our social re-set; a whole new content stream, targeted purposefully toward the fans. These new posts resulted in triple-digit engagement growth over the previous average. Heinz was back where they belonged: the authority on great food in the context of classic American brands.