Is That Heinz? What The Colour Of The Ketchup tells you about brand equity and brand assets…
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – Heinz had a problem with restaurants and greasy spoons refilling their bottles with cheap poor tasting ketchup while the customer was expecting the real thing.
They…
🍅 Noticed that the cheaper own-label and wholesale brands were a completely different colour, watery, darker and browner in comparison to the vibrant red of Heinz
🍅 Heinz matched the colour of the Red iconic Heinz border, to the signature Sauce Red – creating an immediate mechanism for consumers to check the product against
🍅 An on pack quality guarantee, a cultural “in the know” tribe building moment, a deterrent for sauce refillers globally
🍅 They then ran multiple campaigns – “Is That Heinz? Check with the colour of the label”
Brands the size of Heinz know that brand assets are brand equity and brand equity is IP.
Is there a bigger compliment for a brand than building equity so strong that others need to trade off of it? That it becomes the “industry shortcode” for, “we do things properly here” – even if we are faking it… and to use anything else just becomes bad business sense?
If you didn’t know this before? Would you look out for the real deal now? Would you be happy with the mystery brown sauce?
If your name was removed from your packaging — would shoppers still know it was you?
We help brands build the colour, structure, and visual language that makes the answer yes
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