For Heinz, It's Easy Being Green

Selling to Kids, Jan 24, 2001

The Case

When you start selling green ketchup, strange things are bound to happen. After Heinz EZ Squirt Ketchup (also available in red for those purists out there) hit the market in October, it was reportedly going for around 10 bucks on eBay. And suddenly, long-lost "relatives" of Heinz CEO William Johnson started calling the company trying to get a bottle.

"Our plant for the first three months was running 24 hours, seven days a week in order to keep up with demand," says Kelly Stitt, brand manager for EZ Squirt.

She wouldn't discuss financial specifics, but Stitt says things are going so well that EZ Squirt pretty much met its annual sales expectations in just three months - and Heinz didn't roll out promotions for the product until the last month of the 3rd quarter.

What prompted the No. 1 maker of ketchup, which has more than $1 billion in annual sales to try something so new?

In the late '90s, H.J. Heinz Co. saw its share of the U.S. ketchup market drop from the mid-40s to around 43 percent. Instead of going after the adults who buy the ketchup, the 131-year-old food company turned to the gooey, red stuff's No. 1 fans - kids. Along with the introduction of EZ Squirt, fiscal 2000 ushered in new advertising aimed at teens (whom Heinz has identified as one of its most receptive audiences) and aired the spots during programs like "Dawson's Creek." Limited-edition Pokemon bottles hit stores for younger kids.

You Want What?

EZ Squirt was the result of continuous communication with kids, Stitt says. Heinz asked kids what they wanted out of ketchup and found that first they wanted a bottle that gave them more control. They wanted something that was "easier to hold, squeeze and to start and stop," she says.

Over the next year, 10 prototypes were developed and brought back to kids. By the time EZ Squirt debuted, about 1,000 kids across the country had been exposed to it. They dictated how thin the stream of ketchup should be, the shape of the bottle and the look of the label.

Then, the piece de resistance - they wanted a new color. Green or blue, preferably. And this is where Stitt has some advice to fellow youth marketers: listen to kids!

"Our initial instinct was, 'that's gross!'" she says. "We could have very easily shunned an idea that sounded too out of the box. But for them, ketchup had not yet been defined. You've got to take their ideas seriously and see what you can do to deliver."

The result: Heinz found a way to answer kids' request for interactive food by creating more than ketchup. With its thin stream, EZ Squirt could double as a dinner-time writing utensil.

While kids might like having something that resembles green slime on their fries, Heinz also had to make sure the product appealed to the adults holding the purse strings. The solution was to add Vitamin C to the first ketchup specially fortified for kids. Plus, "moms are glad that their 6-year-old has a bottle that they can handle better at the dinner table," says Stitt. "Less mess."

Buzzing Over Ketchup

Before EZ Squirt even hit the shelves, it had generated considerable buzz. Media coverage was phenomenal - the Associated Press, the Detroit Free Press and U.S. News & World Report are just a few media outlets that featured the green stuff. Months before the product even debuted, folks were reading about it.

"We expected to get great publicity, [but we] got even more than we expected," Stitt says. She chalks some of the success up to the team effort between the marketing and PR agency, Magnet Communications. But Stitt says that while some may want to claim Heinz had the greatest PR campaign ever, she thinks a lot of the attention was just because "the idea was fascinating." Give reporters a new twist on something old with a great photo op, and you may be onto something.

This month Heinz began airing its first TV commercials for EZ Squirt. Two 30-second spots, created by Leo Burnett USA, are running on kids programs on ABC, FOX Kids, WB, Cartoon Network, FOX Family and Nickelodeon. The food company is also teaming up with the WB network for a "squirtstakes." The grand prize winner will be turned into a cartoon character and appear on the network.

Kids can surf onto http://www.KidsWB.com and paint a scene from the WB's "Detention" with bottles of Heinz EZ Squirt in Blastin' Green and Red.

Heinz has also worked with schools, providing products and posters, and getting placement on menu calendars that went home with kids in November.

Pouring in the Green

While Stitt would not discuss the campaign's budget or other financial specifics, she says things are going well. In addition to already meeting annual sales expectations, EZ Squirt has captured 4% of the category volume share, which is what Heinz expected, she says. For fiscal 2000, Heinz ketchup's market share rose to 54%, with volume up 6%.

When asked what she wished had been done differently, Stitt points to the planning surrounding EZ Squirt's launch. "We wish we could have better anticipated the frenzy," she says.