Heinz cleans up for 150th birthday celebration
To mark the 150th birthday of its eponymous ketchup, Heinz is launching a multi-media campaign in Europe the Middle East and Africa. The campaign kicked off with a fast-paced video spot showing plates being wiped clean by satisfied diners who’ve been enjoying the ketchup. The music is quirky and fun and the spot has lots of energy, but for sure someone in there is putting ketchup on spaghetti. Very British.
Meanwhile, Heinz is also celebrating Easter with a pop-up shop in London offering Easter Creme Egg Mayonnaise—a collaboration with Easter Creme Egg maker Cadbury.
The mashup seems like an outrageous stunt—and it is—but also fits the recent trend of Heinz experimenting with new flavours. First it mixed mayonnaise with ketchup to form Maychup, and just last week revealed that it was launching a ketchup and ranch dressing blend called Kranch in the U.S.
An emotional goodbye for Dwayne Wade
Sports fans and non-sports fans alike were reduced to a blubbering mess this week, as Budweiser‘s stirring tribute video to retiring NBA legend Dwayne Wade, “This Bud’s for 3,” made the rounds.
The four-minute spot opens by explaining that Wade has been swapping jerseys with NBA legends to commemorate his final season, before a super appears: “But before he says goodbye, we surprised him with five more.”
It then shows Wade standing at centre court in a darkened American Airlines Arena, where he is presented with jerseys from five people whose lives he impacted outside of basketball. They include the sister of a Parkland shooting victim whose name Wade wrote on his shoe, a college graduate who benefited from a full tuition scholarship and his mother, Jolinda Wade.
To mix sports metaphors, Budweiser has been knocking it out of the park with its sports-themed work recently—from its video for the jersey retirement of New York Yankees legend Derek Jeter, to its recent film from Spike Lee commemorating the 100th birthday of Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s colour barrier.
Budweiser’s Dwayne Wade spot largely overshadowed a similarly heartfelt effort from Gatorade, itself no stranger to emotional sports videos, which built a tribute video around the old Schoolhouse Rock number “3 is a Magic Number.”
Travel Oregon presents another exaggerated vision of the Beaver State
Wieden + Kennedy Portland is revisiting the fantastical world it created for last year’s “Only Slightly Exaggerated” short film for Travel Oregon.
The latest two-minute spot, “Only Slightly (More) Exaggerated” is a companion piece that marries stunning visuals by Psyop and Sun Creature Studios to a magnificent score by Jim Dooley.
Mimicking the style of legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, the spot shows nature coming to a life. The original spot garnered more than 10 million views on YouTube.
UK cosmetics brand Lush gives social media the flush
In a move that speaks to growing marketer dissatisfaction with social media, handmade cosmetics company Lush UK announced this week that it is scaling back its social presence (its North American presence is unaffected).
In a Twitter post announcing its decision, Lush, said that social media is “making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly.”
The company said it is “tired” of fighting with algorithms, and doesn’t want to pay to appear in newsfeeds. The company has nearly 1.2 million subscribers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The move immediately drew criticism, with one Twitter user asking the company’s plans for when people complain, want to ask questions or share photos of its products.
Lush’s response: “We are just switching the conversation from a brand handle (@Lush) to a hashtag (#LushCommunity). We’re taking our first step to reducing our reliance on the brand and injecting more personality and individual voices.”
While social has become a key tool for marketers, it has also become something of a minefield, where missteps are debated and discussed in a public forum.
Lush was heavily criticized on social media last year for its “Anti spy cops” campaign addressing the so-called “spy cops” scandal, in which undercover officers infiltrated activist groups in England and Wales. The campaign, which included window displays bearing messages like “police have crossed the line” and “police spies out of lives,” led to complaints to the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
But marketing experts seem unconvinced of the viability of Lush’s decision to abandon social entirely, with experts saying that turning its back on such a large audience could have negative implications.
Pritchard puts digital ad giants on blast again
P&G’s chief brand officer Mark Pritchard delivered another blistering broadside to the digital media industry this week, criticizing everything from its lack of transparency, to fraud, and its continued inability to safeguard advertisers against harmful content.
According to a Bloomberg News report, Pritchard said that P&G would move its money to services that are able to guarantee effectiveness, are free of offensive content and more amenable to sharing consumer data with advertisers.
“We’ve been tolerant for too long,” the Bloomberg report quoted Pritchard as saying. “It’s not acceptable to have brands showing up where opioids are being offered, where illegal drugs are promoted, where abhorrent behavior is present or where violence is seen. The apologies are heartfelt and appreciated, but that’s not good enough.”
Pritchard also called for ad platforms to use a standardized method for identifying individual consumers, so that brands can avoid repeatedly hitting them with the same ad as they move across the web.
