"We want to go viral."

Sound familiar? Well, this campaign did just that, when we conceived and produced a groundbreaking new Heinz bottle and in doing so, grabbed the world media’s attention.

Ketch-Up & Down, an idea conceived and rolled out by our team in Dubai, brilliantly showcased Heinz’s commitment to its fans, cemented its place as the world’s favourite ketchup and solved a seemingly niggling problem with a truly original solution.

Since forever, ketchup lovers have struggled to get to the bottom of their bottles.

In 2002 Heinz thought it had solved the problem with the introduction of the world’s first upside-down squeezy bottle. But more than 20 years on, we discovered that many ketchup fans still store these bottles the wrong way, and consequently struggle to get the very last drop out of their favourite condiment.

Heinz wanted to solve this once and for all.

We’re all familiar with the frustration – you can see the ketchup in the bottle, but try as you might, you just can't get to it. And so the bottle is binned.

Diving deep into Heinz customer data revealed that an astonishing 83% of people struggle to extract those last remaining drops.

And that’s not all.

40% of ketchup fans actually store their bottles incorrectly! Despite the squeezy bottle being developed precisely to make it easier to get ketchup onto our chips, two in five people are creating extra work for themselves by storing their ketchup bottle lid-end up. (A challenge unique to the Middle East: many traditional Arabs – typically the older generation – don’t read English fluently, so they can’t read the packaging which tells them which way up to correctly store the bottle.)

We needed an innovative solution that would focus on the correct way to store a Heinz ketchup bottle – but in a way that would transcend language.

One simple idea proved the solution to both these problems: a new bottle with one lid on the top, and another on the bottom. With the Heinz Ketch-Up & Down bottle, it was impossible to store ketchup the wrong way. 

We tested several designs to ensure our prototype would be appealing, meet health and safety standards and – of course – solve the problem we set out to answer. Our final design was not only visually stunning but also 100% recyclable. 

To generate maximum exposure for its launch, we took a risk and hooked onto one of the world’s busiest news periods, April Fool’s Day. Traditionally a bun-fight as brands try and create the funniest, most believable pranks, we didn’t want to be seen as a fake stunt. So, we embraced an element of intrigue and released our story globally on 31 March.

A multi-layered approach to our integrated communications strategy saw us using earned, paid, owned and shared channels and hyper-localising content to resonate in target markets.

With the bottle nailed, we created a series of stunning social media posts and posters to showcase on Heinz’s social channels in the run-up and post-launch, playing on the upside-down nature of the bottle.

To seed intrigue before going public, we gave influencers limited-edition bottles to try for themselves, encouraging them to create content using our specially designed social media filters.

As well as localising content across nine languages, we produced B-roll footage for broadcast media to amplify our innovation, and worked with a global newswire to spread the news far and wide.

We were excited and knew the world would be too. That’s why we set the bar pretty high with our campaign objectives. Then we smashed every one of them. Within hours coverage streamed in from across the globe and social media conversation went off the charts.

Our simple idea that showed the world how ridiculously easy it is to use our bottle correctly, increased awareness about the proper way to store ketchup and positioned Heinz as the original king of ketchup.