How Heinz Is Winning with a Series of Saucy Brand Collabs
Industry-leading partnerships are a crucial part of Kraft-Heinz’s long-term growth plans – whether it’s partnering with our customers, suppliers, tech partners or other food companies. Our latest collaborations have leaned into creativity through unconventional partnerships in the spirits, luxury and entertainment categories, all iconic brands.
Heinz’s reputation for quality ingredients, innovation capabilities, and authentic brand experience makes other brands willing to push boundaries to create something entirely new and delightful for its combined audiences. We salute every brand who was willing to take a chance and try something different, it’s been exciting and effective. There’s a whole new generation of brand innovators and agency partners finding inspiration in connecting Heinz with their beloved brands and we are seeing the results of creative bravery.
Let me take you through some of my favourites.
Heinz x Absolut Pasta Sauce
The Heinz x Absolut partnership was an audience-inspired innovation and named a Global Grand Prix winner by WARC for the campaign’s effectiveness.
When one of the top trending recipes on TikTok was penne alla vodka, made viral thanks to a Gigi Hadid Instagram post, our opportunity was clear. Our beloved Heinz tomatoes needed the most iconic vodka to bring this recipe to life – so we reached out to Absolut (via LinkedIn!) and together, quickly decided to give it a shot.
We, alongside our agency partner VML Spain, were able to tap into Absolut’s ‘cool factor’, which helped us engage with younger audiences who might not consider buying into the pasta sauce category. Absolut benefitted from our Heinz penetration and familiarity, opening new usage occasions for its product. And whilst the limited edition product was only available in the UK, the campaign travelled to all parts of the globe, benefiting both brands way beyond our initial goals.
Absolut x Heinz drove 500 million plus media impressions in 20 plus languages across 30 plus countries. More than 130 media outlets reported on the sauce, and the product was even sold on eBay for £250! The campaign drove 52% sales uplift and trial for the entire Heinz pasta sauces range, making Heinz the number one brand in market share during that period. A massive win for a brand that had just entered the pasta sauces category. And the limited edition product became Heinz’s third highest-selling product (just behind ketchup and baked beans).
Caio Fontenele, growth and new ventures director at Kraft-Heinz
Heinz Barbie-cue
Our relationship with Barbie started ahead of the summer blockbuster movie launch. As Barbie fans, we spent a lot of time thinking of the perfect way to create a fun partnership while staying authentic to our brand and the high quality, tasty products people expect from us.
We knew from our consumer insight that people have been blending our Heinz Classic BBQ sauce and our Heinz Seriously Good Mayo together for years for a smoky-smooth sauce, and it just made sense: Barbiecue was born!
Right around the time the movie launched, we shared a mock-up of the product on social and asked our fans if we should make it a reality. The answer was a resounding YES (that single post earned around 26 million organic impressions), and our teams then got to work perfecting the recipe hack for the masses. Wonderland Communications set to work on creating the campaign.
We took the time to create the perfect shade of pink (which our teams achieved using beetroot extract), and waited to give Barbiecue the moment it deserves: Barbie’s 65th birthday perfectly timed with the official start of barbecue season. Pink ketchup, anyone?
Paramount Pictures: Heinz ‘Godfather Pasta Sauce’
To mark the 2024 film award show season, we celebrated a true masterpiece of cinema by partnering with Paramount Pictures to recreate arguably one of the most famous food recipes featured in cinema. This was another project with VML Spain.
The Godfather remains one of the greatest films in cinema history. As we rewatched the famous scene of Clemenza teaching Michael Corleone how to make his perfect pasta sauce, we had an aha moment. The social media trend of people replicating recipes from their favourite films and TV series at home gave us the molto bene insight to bring this iconic recipe to life.
The limited edition pasta sauce featured the exact same ingredients named in the film by Peter ‘leave the gun, take the cannoli’ Clemenza and we celebrated the launch with our very own premiere in London’s Leicester Square cinemas.
We experienced record sales of limited edition HeinzxGodfather Pasta Sauces, but we also created an experience. We loved watching consumers replicating film scenes at their homes and we were glad to see the barrier between food and entertainment being broken.
Heinz X Morley’s Fried Chicken Sauce
Fried chicken is having a renaissance in the UK, outranking Britain’s beloved fish and chips to become the nation’s favourite takeaway treat. With that, we saw a clear opportunity to create a fried chicken sauce and knew we needed a perfect partner in Morley’s, which has achieved cult status spanning from celebrities to in-the-know Londoners.
We initially launched the sauce (a blend of sweet and spicy flavours thanks to the perfect mix of tomatoes, paprika, onions, and chilli) as a limited edition sauce for our Heinz X Morley’s restaurant pop up and it’s now available in Tesco, nationwide and via HeinztoHome.co.uk.
Heinz X Fauchon
Perhaps a bit posher, yet still as iconic as our other collaborations, Heinz and macaron masters Fauchon set out to prove that even the most unexpected pairings can be a perfect match, combining more than a century’s worth of experience to create the duo’s first ever ‘Tomacaron’.
57 boxes were made available at the Grand Café Fauchon, situated inside the prestigious Fauchon L'Hôtel Paris. The experience featured a joint competition on Instagram, giving those who entered from across France a chance to win one of the 57 boxes of ‘Tomacarons’ to make Valentine’s Day as memorable as our brands.
