Heinz takes it slow (of course) on Twitter

From a notoriously difficult jigsaw puzzle to a painfully slow-loading website, Heinz Ketchup has recently found some creative ways to demonstrate its longstanding claim to be the world’s slowest-pouring condiment.

Now it’s back with a new Twitter campaign developed by its in-house social media agency The Kitchen. “The World’s Slowest Tweet” is built around a 57-letter (naturally) message that is being revealed one letter at a time over the course of 57 hours.

Heinz says the idea was inspired by today’s culture of “now,” in which consumers demand news, information and entertainment in real-time. Twitter, it says, is the embodiment of that consumer expectation.

Heinz is also promising “sweet Heinz merch” to anyone able to guess the tweet in its entirety before the final reveal—as of Wednesday morning, the message read: “Always tasty never hasty, Heinz is not a race so pour that…”

As with anything on Twitter, the guesses range from the plausible to the borderline nonsensical. “This is like the ultimate Wordle,” said one respondent.

“[W]e never miss an opportunity to remind fans that good things take time,” said Jacqueline Chao, Heinz’s senior brand manager, brand communications, in a release. “With the ‘World’s Slowest Tweet,’ we wanted to engage fans in a unique way that is ownable to the brand by disrupting a platform that’s all about speed and immediacy, with a message that will be worth the wait, just like Heinz.”

“We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to invert a platform’s purpose, and we’d love if fans of Heinz use this as a reminder to take things slower on Twitter,” said Simon Au, executive creative director of The Kitchen Toronto in an email statement.

Chris Powell