Heinz Pasta Sauce:
Narcissistic Apology or
Desired Product?

It was when I read this article by Mark Ritson I realized what it was. While the tagline "150 years late, 7 ways to apologise" is clever, it takes place at the expense of something very important – the consumer benefit, the what's in it for me.

Ritson goes on to explain just how important the 3 C's are in positioning: Company (what the product is), Competitors (how is it better than the others) and Customer (what is the benefit to the target audience). Miss one of those and almost certainly miss your consumer. Also the public apology band wagon has gotten so out of hand that it casts a shadow of negativity over this otherwise lighthearted comm.

So is this actually true when it comes to the masses? Will it affect purchase intent? We tested the ad to find out.

The combined score is slightly below average, only 67. Majority of people found it appealing and credible, which means that they are not rejecting the idea of another pasta sauce manufactured by Heinz. However, the excitement and anticipation suggested by the ad doesn't seem to be reflected in the sentiment coming through in the open ended answers. The consumers seem to feel rather lukewarm towards the idea.

The ad is interesting and grabs attention. The concise tagline makes you want to read it, but is the 150 year 'delay' in the launch of pasta sauces enough to hang the whole campaign on?

Seemingly not. With the rest of the scores in the yellow and red zone, uniqueness and relevance are especially low. If you are not the one thinking about when Heinz was finally going to release their pasta sauces already, you probably would not find the angle speaks to you.

So the desire to tell others is also low. Additionally we see that apologising is a step too far, too dramatic, too irrelevant as shown by the low relevance score.

But! Does the brand have enough legacy to carry the interest over from this ad into trying?

So while Mark was spot on about the ad, he was also right about the brand legacy:

Heinz carries enough credibility as an overall brand to interest people to buy / try. 76% of those who buy pasta sauces (89%) can see themselves switching to Heinz, which is reflected in the 69% purchase intent score out of the full sample.

In the meantime we continue to anticipate good work by all the creative agencies out there and Wunderman Thompson Espana, who was courageous enough to try something new. And that in itself is admirable. We love good creative. Hopefully they can learn from this minor hiccup and continue delivering even more great creative.