Listening Blog Post

Marketing in The News: Heinz To Hellmann's

I'm not too sure about other folks but, me personally, I have never purchased a brand of mayo aside from Hellmann's. Even at my place of work and at my brothers restaurant, Hellmann's mayo is the go-to. Now, considering this I was pretty intrigued by this new marketing campaign from Hellmann's.

As outlined by this article from the Creative Salon, Hellmann's launched a campaign targeting specifically Heinz and folks in Germany that shared a last name with this brand. The premise was simple but rather outlandish: encourage people named Heinz that liked mayo more than ketchup to officially change their last name to Hellmann's.

They mainly took to Instagram and that was where this campaign caught the most traction. Five Heinz's quickly volunteered to change their last names across all social media platform to show their support for what they believe to be the better condiment brand. One such supporter was Christoph Heinz (Now Hellmann) and stood out by beginning the legal process to become a Hellmann. This completely unexpected response elicited Hellmann's Mayo to create a short documentary film chronicling the name change process for Christoph.

This video is made exceptionally well for it's intention of being relatable and serving as a way to promote  Hellmann's over Heinz. It relates Christophs troubles with being named a Heinz having been called "Tomato-Head" and has exceptional product placement of Hellmann's throughout. It carries an upbeat tone through the music choice and has Christoph always smiling whenever Hellmann's gets brought up.

The overall tone of the video and the intent of the campaign are at odds though. The video is largely in line with Hellmann's brand bringing a sense of family, friendliness, and safety. But, the Instagram adverts  are largely hostile and declarative towards Heinz. Though, this hostility and conflict isn't necessarily bad.

Folks on the internet tend to like having something to argue about. Feeding this want with your brand is a sure fire way to get your name out there and Hellmann's made a fair attempt at that. They however, fell short in a very crucial spot 

This fault was in outreach. They only released these adverts onto their official german instagram account. They made no attempt at releasing onto other platforms like TikTok, X(formerly Twitter), or even Facebook. This lack of range led to this campaign just kind of flopping into the wayside without much traction. 

If I were to head up this campaign I would likely have taken to X (formerly twitter) first and released it across both the German and US accounts. The people that regularly use X absolutely love brand conflicts. One such example would be the Wendy's marketing through X. It is generally Wendy's poking fun and finding faults in other fast food chains and folks eat that right up. This seems to be what Hellmann's tried to do as shown by the first image but it landed flat just because of the specific platform they released on and lack of availability across countries. 

Overall, the campaign had strong potential. The video was well made and helped in promoting their brand friendliness. The adverts were declarative and provoked engagement through conflict. But, by Jove did they collapse right before the finish with the lack of outreach. 

About the Author

Hey there, my names Shoutaro Rod Saito and I am a first year at LBCC. I am currently majoring in Business Administration and have plans to earn my bachelors in Business at Pacific University within the next 3 years. I am 18 and from a pretty unimpressive countryside town called Monroe.

I enrolled in this marketing class because of my general interest in the psychological aspect of marketing. I was debating being a psych major before I landed on business and, I believe that this class will fulfill some of my interest in psychology while still being a credit towards my degree. 

Outside of school and work, I spend my time doing various things like hiking, mountain biking, cooking, and bowling to list a few.  Most of my time though is committed to videogames and car repairs. I tend to play a lot of FPS's but I also don't limit myself to a specific genre for games considered how there's so many wonderful ones to play. I however, especially like most games developed by From Software and Hideo Kojima. 

Now, my time spent on car repairs isn't usually by choice. My car pretty frequently has issues that need attention and I do my best to fix them. When I do choose to work on cars though it is generally on my friends or fathers projects. We all kind of favor older cars and this is kind of the root of most of our issues. From completely rusted on bolts to questioning the engineers qualifications, the amount of issues that we run into restoring these cars leaves me absolutely livid. But, the payoff is always way to cool to not at least give restoration a shot. 

My most recent project is my buddies 1969 Ford F250 that we are trying to get up and running intime for his girlfriends birthday. Though we have only managed to get it to turn over so far we just think we need to rebuild the carburetor and put in a new fuel pump to get it running. 

Then here's a photo of me atop mount Kilauea in Hawaii as it was erupting