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The story goes like this. Heinz, long-trusted guardian of the original tomato ketchup recipe, was faced with a sudden threat. America, it seemed, was coming under a spell. The consumer, satisfied for decades with its classic viscous slow-flow ketchup, was speeding life up---and switching loyalty to watery quick-flow rival sauces. Heinz looked at the options. Stay viscous or go liquid? After all, it was a new world out there, and speed was in. Everybody wanted an easy answer, a convenient solution, a quickie bite. Was there place for the ponderously slow, the romantically nuanced, in such an accelerating world? That's when Heinz hit the airwaves with a commercial that goes down in history as a classic. It was a longish TV commercial, featuring the ketchup nozzle. Poised over the food, taking its own sweet time to start oozing. The breakthrough part was the analogy, the parallel narrative, to which the ad would cut to, back and forth---the slowest, most sensual seduction sequence seen commercially on TV, playing to the slowest, most sensual soundtrack. Oh well, maybe not soundtrack. There have been many better. But it worked. Heinz made a dramatic recovery---standing firm in its own brand conviction. Some things are always done better with greater patience, tact, intellect and understanding.
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Before
Durex, before KamaSutra and before MR Coffee, there was a ketchup called
Heinz that almost nobody in India had heard of. It was a favourite with
adfolk of a certain persuasion, however. For this was an American ketchup
brand that had done what every creative soul in advertising dreams of
doing: smashing through the clutter spectacularly, and achieving a
dramatic objective for the client. Doing one or the other is no big deal.
Doing both is the stuff of heroism.