Heinz Ketchup is known the world over for being the ketchup. It’s the original and has been for over 150 years. But being as big and as old as Heinz has its own set of challenges - specifically when it comes to finding new ways to maintain relevance, brand love, and fend off a sea of new ketchup competitors.

We were tasked with creating a summer campaign that bolstered Heinz iconic status to ensure we stayed top of mind during the high season for condiment sales, summer BBQ season.

We set out to get consumers talking about Heinz in a new way by finding an insight that felt natural to BBQ season, while being ownable for Heinz.

Through social listening and cultural commentary, we uncovered one of the world’s most controversial injustices: hot dogs come in packs of 10 and buns come in packs of 8. Why? It’s archaic, a travesty and frankly, a serious waste of hot dogs.

As the condiment of summer, Heinz needed to put an end to the madness.

Long celebrated for making hot dogs even better, we knew Heinz could play the role of hero by brokering a deal to once and for all fix the uneven package conundrum.

The solution was to create The Heinz Hot Dog Pact - a rally cry for hot dog and bun companies to finally make even packages.

On July 6, following Canadian and U.S. long weekends when the pain point of unequal packaging was top of mind, we hacked culture and inserted Heinz into the zeitgeist.

To achieve mass awareness, OLV and social posts were deployed that clearly outlined the issue. We called on big bun and big weiner to resolve the bun and wiener packaging mismatch, and invited consumers to take action by signing the Heinz Hot Dog Pact on Change.org.

TikTok sensation, Lubalin, was enlisted to further fuel the debate by creating a unique anthem that rallied everyone to fight the injustice that Heinz was standing up to.

Once the conversation started to bubble and wiener enthusiasts and celebs took notice, we released a statement calling out big bun and wiener companies to do better.

To further troll these companies, we leveraged contextually relevant out of home boards - placed uncomfortably close to bun and wiener offices - highlighting the uneven bun to wiener ratios, and demanding answers.

Food and lifestyle influencers helped share the pact while hot dog and bun brands furiously crafted responses to our posts.

Our plan created a groundswell so large that the story was picked up by Canadian and American news outlets who demanded that big bun and big weiner companies finally address this issue - and celebrated Heinz as a savior.

The uproar became so heated that the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council was called in to defend how this nonsensical state of affairs had been allowed to continue under their watch for so long

The campaign was an overnight success. The Hot Dog Pact Change.org petition quickly became one of the top petitions on the site - gaining over 15,000 signatures in the first 24 hours.

Our goal of creating a summer Heinz moment people would talk about was achieved in spades. We hit a whopping $13MM in earned media and had over 1.2 billion earned impressions - the most successful earned media campaign in the history of Heinz Ketchup.

As a result, overall sales were up 2.3% from 2019 and we saw a 1% increase in share within the Ketchup category.

As for the uneven hot dog and buns packages, the campaign got the entire continent talking about Heinz Ketchup, and Wonder Bread took notice.

They called us, and 10-packs of buns are officially hitting the shelves on June 23rd, 2022. 10 Buns. 10 Wieners. FINALLY.