Heinz Colored Ketchup: Yick.
I think it’s clear that Heinz was targeting their colored product, Heinz EZ Squirt to kids. The bottle is perfectly shaped for a kid’s hand and the entire idea of purple, green and blue ketchup could certainly only be an idea enticing to a child’s mind. So, boom. Great idea for the kiddos. Pair it with an ad campaign starring Shrek, the lovable ogre in order to promote the new Shrek film, and you’ve got a product that flies off the shelf. Kids love Shrek, parents love Shrek, there’s a low price barrier ($1.79), it’s an extremely novel product. All the stars align for a smash hit. Unless you consider the marketing fails surrounding the product, which ultimately led to its discontinuation.
While the product is, as I mentioned before, very novel, there seemed to be little consideration for long-lasting sales. Sales boomed, like, insanely. Casey Kelley, the global ketchup managing director, stated that Heinz sold more units in the first three months than they had expected to sell in an entire year. The ad campaign was simply stellar. I personally begged my parents to buy me and my brothers the oozy, enticing goop that Shrek squeezed onto his slug hot dog in the commercials. Straight up lovable. The price was right and ketchup is product that’s used in every American household anyway; if the kids want green ketchup, why not? A small win for both parents and kids.
However, the product didn’t last mainly because novelty was its most appealing quality. Once this wore off, there was little chance for success. And kids intrinsically have a short-lived excitement when it comes to novelty. There was no market “need” or “problem” surrounding Heinz original ketchup. The recognition and stature of the brand was already extremely stable. Heinz EZ Squirt sold very well in the beginning solely due to novelty (and its relation to the Shrek enterprise). There wasn’t much incentive to keep buying technicolored ketchup once the first bottle ran out. Kids were ambivalent to the color once they’d tried it and parents couldn’t be bothered to make it a staple product since Heinz original ketchup already suited their kids’ needs and didn’t gross out the adults in the household.
Further, what Heinz failed to consider is that moms care very much about what goes into their kids’ bodies. Maybe they assumed that mothers would just not care or not look into how the product was made. However, once mothers caught onto the how Heinz EZ Squirt was made, the product was doomed. To be able to change the ketchup to these outlandish colors required a lot of unnatural processing. First, Heinz had to take the red color out of the ketchup. The removal of this coloring prevented Heinz from labeling the new product ‘tomato ketchup’. Now the bottles just said “same great taste.” Sketchy. This also slightly altered the flavor of a product that was pretty perfect-tasting from the get-go. To make the ketchup colorful, Heinz then had to add a lot of food dye. This weird, processed new product didn’t stand a chance against the original from a health perspective. The product lasted on the shelves from 2000 to 2006. During the end of its run, when moms began to have an increasing interest in health foods, the final nail was hammered into the EZ Squirt coffin.
From this failed effort, Heinz did gain a lot of sales initially, so I’m sure they’re glad they tried it out. I have fond (albeit short-lived) memories with this ketchup, and I believe many people my age probably do as well. From this failure, Heinz could take away a few things:
- Always consider the ingredients and health aspects of products in an age when health-consciousness is increasingly on the rise. Don’t assume mothers will not care or look into these things.
- When making a product that’s targeted at kids, parents’ wants and needs as the buyers of the product also need to be considered. Don’t assume that kids are the only “users” that need to be paid attention.
- Focus on problem areas and needs in the market, rather than just novelty. Don’t assume novelty is enough to make sales last!
