It’s a simple one-page ad. I’d say that brand cant hasn’t been so well executed since the cheese toppings on certain frozen pizzas were accused, accurately but meaninglessly, of including casein (Glue?!?).And I am particularly grateful to reporter Teresa Lindeman. After I saw the ad in Woman’s Day, I found her extensive article about the new Heinz campaign, “Vinegar wars spark high-octane Heinz ads,” in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette dated June 18. If the Heinz ad and Lindeman’s article aren’t required reading for some uni’s mass communications class, they ought to be.
When a single category’s worth almost $250 million and your price point’s down around your ankles, it’s time to “do something.” Anything. So here’s this Heinz condiment ad – a great example of advertising propaganda – asking homemakers that one provoking headline question:
“What field does your vinegar come from?”
When you decide to take your brand to war, propaganda is a key element. Propaganda goes beyond advertising. It’s “…communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause.” The cause, in this case, is the natural organic goodness of Heinz vinegar. The victor wins back lost market share and gets better grocery-store margins.
Lindeman leads with exactly the right touch: The image disturbs. On the one side, stand black towers of an oil facility, and on the other, green stalks of corn plants are seen against a blue sky.
No matter that the oilfield’s 1940s-era rigs comes from some deep photo archive, maybe an Andreas Feininger shot from Life. No matter that it’s difficult to find petroleum-distilled table vinegar in any US supermarket.
No matter, in fact, that it’s neither illegal nor unhealthy to use vinegar distilled from hydrocarbons. The creative does a heckuva job for Heinz, which clearly wants careful homemakers to react strongly to the imagery of the ad. (The full-page advert is supported by a handful a handful of other fine executions under the general campaign theme, HEINZ. GROWN, NOT MADE.TM)
The need for campaign is covered in delicious detail in the Lindeman article; the most telling point invokes the commoditization of vinegar.
Private-label vinegars are cleaning up. Collectively, they’re outselling the Heinz products more than three-to-one. Heinz lost 10%-plus share in unit sales last year. That’s a lot of millions. That’s worth a small war and Heinz has chosen its ground. Every label I read at Kroger’s and HEB says the store brands are made from natural products, too. But Heinz is planting doubt and doing a damn fine job of it.
The first volley of the war, this ad campaign is brand-building on a narrowly focused but national scale. Not to mention propagandizing at the same time.
I’m counting on Lindeman to let me know how the battles go.
