Description
Winner of a 2023 Clio Gold Award for Product/Service
This winning entry titled 'A.I Ketchup ' was entered for Kraft Heinz by Rethink, Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver.
Heinz Ketchup is a cultural icon - it’s not just a ketchup, it is the ketchup. But its status as an establishment brand meant it was in danger of losing relevance with younger audiences. We were challenged to keep a 153-year-old brand fresh in the cultural conversation.
This summer, text-to-image AI generators took the Internet by storm. People were creating weird and wild images from written prompts like “Napoleon riding a Harley Davidson”, or “R2D2 getting baptized.” We saw an opportunity to participate in an exciting cultural conversation while proving to a new, younger audience of tech and art fans that Heinz is the definitive ketchup.
We turned to DALL-E 2, the most advanced Al image generator - so advanced that it wasn’t even available to the general public yet - and asked it what "ketchup" looked like. The result? Even to Al, ketchup looks like Heinz. And as the prompts got weirder, from "Renaissance Ketchup Bottle" to "Ketchup Tarot Card", the Al still generated results that looked like Heinz.
On social, we asked people to push the experiment further with suggestions for new ketchup-based image prompts. We took these suggestions and turned them into the first-ever campaign with visuals generated entirely by AI.
We then produced a run of special edition Heinz bottles replacing the label with our Heinz AI images, and even created an art gallery in the metaverse where people flocked to view all the Heinz AI images.
Originally launched in Canada and the US, our campaign quickly went global, generating over 850M earned impressions around the world (worth over 2500% more than our media investment). We received coverage in leading trade, art, tech, and lifestyle media outlets like Fast Company, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and Forbes. On social, we saw an engagement rate 38% higher than past campaigns, and even other brands like Ducati and Sportsnet chimed in with AI Ketchup image mashup requests.
In the end we proved our point: Heinz is ketchup. And this time, even the machines agreed.
This professional campaign titled 'A.I Ketchup' was published in Canada and United States in May, 2023. It was created for the brand: Heinz, by ad agency: Rethink. This Integrated medium campaign is related to the Food industry and contains 6 media assets. It was submitted 12 months ago.
Credits
Production Company Rethink, Toronto
Advertiser Brand Kraft Heinz, Toronto
Advertising Agency Rethink, Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver
Entrant Company Rethink, Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver
Public Relations Agency Middle Child
Public Relations Agency Zeno Group, Toronto
Media Agency CARAT, Toronto
Media Agency Starcom, Toronto
Music/Sound Company Circonflex, Montreal
Chief Creative Officer Aaron Starkman / Rethink
Chief Creative Officer Mike Dubrick / Rethink
Creative Director Xavier Blais / Rethink
Creative Director Zachary Bautista / Rethink
Associate Creative Director Geoff Baillie / Rethink
Copywriter Geoff Baillie / Rethink
Copywriter Xavier Blais / Rethink
Copywriter Aman Soin / Rethink
Art Director Zachary Bautista / Rethink
Chief Strategy Officer Sean McDonald / Rethink
Strategy Director Julian Morgan / Rethink
Interactive Designer Alex Fleming / Rethink
Producer Alex Butt / Rethink
Producer Steph Walker-Wells / Rethink
Producer Katia Dupuy / Rethink
Producer Keegan Shay / Rethink
Post Production Supervisor Megan O’Connor / Rethink
Post Production Supervisor Shannon Ing / Rethink
Post Supervsior Emma Rozenblum / Rethink
Digital Producer Sheldon Sam / Rethink
Print Producer AJ Merrick / Rethink
Studio Artist Brad Kumar / Rethink
Studio Artist Cadu Rocha / Rethink
Group Account Director Jamie Sutherland / Rethink
Account Director David Greisman / Rethink
Account Director Catherine Blouin-Mainville / Rethink
Account Manager Ashlynn Labinaz / Rethink
Editor Tyler Erdelac / Rethink
Editor Anna Vershinina / Rethink
Editor Ignacio Florez / Rethink
Editor Étienne Bergeron / Rethink
Editor Emma Laberge
Video VFX Dustin Gamble / Rethink
Video VFX Jean-Nicolas Duval / Rethink
Head of Brand Communications Megan Lang / Kraft Heinz
