Heinz Plans Huge Promo To Announce Ketchup Is Made With Tomatoes
If Marketing Execs Behind Promo Can Stop Laughing, Plans In Place To Reveal Hershey Bars Are Made With Chocolate
If you own stock in Heinz, you may want to sell it. If you don’t own shares in Heinz, you may want to short the stock as the company gears up for its largest advertising campaign in 25 years to promote the fact that … wait for it … wait for it … there are tomatoes in ketchup!
Heinz, in a stunning overhaul of their label, decided to chuck 110 years of having a pickle — which is not even an ingredient in ketchup — on the label and replace it with the picture of a vine-ripened tomato.
According to MSNBC, “In testing, mothers — the target buyers — said having the tomato on the label helped them make the connection with the product’s main ingredient.”
Moms said seeing red stuff inside the bottle and learning in second grade that ketchup was made with tomatoes also helped them “make the connection.”
A spokesperson for moms noted, “I think we moms pretty much get that ketchup is made with tomatoes. Having a pickle on the label for the last 110 years didn’t confuse anybody, so I don’t think you really need to insult our intelligence by crafting a marketing campaign around your main ingredient.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if Heinz comes across any moms so stupid that they don’t know there are tomatoes in ketchup without a big picture on the label, they should report these moms immediately to Planned Parenthood where they can be schooled in modern birth control techniques.
In addition to the big picture of the tomato, the new Heinz ketchup label will also feature the tagline “Grown Not Made.”
The slogan presumably refers to the tomato, not the bottle of ketchup.
I didn’t pay whole lot of attention in high school botany but I’m pretty sure plastic squeeze bottles don’t grow on trees or even vines.
Although, growing a bottle of ketchup on a tree would be about the only thing that could justify the kind of excitement that Heinz officials are exhibiting over the new label.
Noel Geoffrey, director of ketchup for Heinz, exclaimed, “”We really felt that the tomato is the hero of ketchup, and it was the right time to make the switch on our label.”
Jeezus! If the ketchup gushed as much as Noel does, maybe it wouldn’t be the second most popular condiment behind salsa.
And while we’re at it, America, can we stop referring to everyone or everything that does something just beyond walking and breathing as “a hero?”
Kids who memorize their times tables, waiters who perform the Heimlich maneuver and vegetables that form the base of a popular condiment aren’t really “heroes.”
Now, I know I’ve been called a hero by women for the way I leave them satisfied … but really, ladies, I was just doing my job.
The real heroes work for Pfizer.
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Anticipation… The old label with a pickle and the word New! on it and the new label with an old tomato on it. Heinz’ new advertising is going to clear up all the confusion.
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Photo credit: Heinz.com
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