Ridiculously Late. Ridiculously Good

Heinz has proven to the U.K. that nothing’s too late if it’s ridiculously good

Reacting in The Sun to great British achievements that the U.K. was celebrating with a big delay, Heinz brought the “ridiculously late, ridiculously good” message of their campaign closer to the audience, reaching 140M impressions on earned media.

We wanted to connect with popular culture and current conversations despite the fact that the campaign was totally leaning on the brand. But life is full of news that are ridiculously good despite being ridiculously late. And they worked ridiculously well”.

Pipo Virgós

Executive Creative Director at Wunderman Thompson Spain

Challenge

After 150 years of tomato expertise, Heinz introduced its first pasta sauce for the English market with the campaign "Ridiculously late, ridiculously good," which humorously highlighted the company's delay. The results surpassed expectations, making it the best sauce category launch in five years. Despite being a saturated category dominated by low-cost brands, Heinz achieved record sales of £212,000.
The primary objective was to maintain a leading position in the category while sustaining the relevance and purchase intent achieved during the launch campaign. After seeing the campaign, 62% of UK consumers considered it likely or extremely likely to purchase the product.

Inspiration

We realized that the fact of being late but worth the wait gave us the opportunity to identify throughout the year characters, events, or situations that also arrived very, very late. Occasions where our concept could be highly relevant.

Idea

We partnered with The Sun to react at big events the U.K. were celebrating after a long wait. Jumping into the conversation the day those news were published, adding a touch of humor. In this way, we applaud the first English footballer that came out publicly as gay. We congratulated the National English Team for winning their first European Championship. We celebrated the return of Glastonbury Festival after the pandemic. And we seized the opportunity of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee to launch a letter celebrating the jubilee of her great-great-grandmother, Victoria. Apologizing for not being there with our sauce 135 years ago, when it was due

Growth

The campaign reached 149 million of earned media impressions. These pieces significantly contributed to making it the best consumer product launch for Heinz in the past five years. It increased overall category sales by 14%, successfully breaking a downward trend.