Issue #99: Kraft Heinz Outsmarts FIFA And TSA?

I have been trying to get smarter about how the advertising world works, and I figured I was not the only one. Advertising is a major part of society today, albeit less prevalent in the traditional retail world compared to other walks of life.

With that in mind, I had the pleasure of chatting with Kevin Weatherman, from Upscale, about what he is building and the future of retail media. If you have not had the chance to check out our conversation, I highly, highly recommend it!

In 2018, the combined effort of the United States, Canada, and Mexico beat out Morocco to host the 2026 World Cup. For the past couple of years, fans and brands have been planning to their heart’s desire on how to capitalize on this moment. Tourism, both domestic and international, was expected to rise. Restaurants and bars were anticipating historic numbers as people gathered together to watch the games with friends and strangers.

Planning all that is great, but as the saying goes, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” No matter how you plan, you still need to be able to react instantly, as challenging as that is in the retail and CPG sectors. Still, brands were able to pull it off, and I want to highlight one company in particular that has won the chatter of the World Cup from a CPG standpoint, and they don’t even seem to be a sponsor!

FIFA is notorious for being ruthless about not giving any visibility to anyone who is not a sponsor. At Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusetts, since Gillette is not a sponsor, they taped over the Gillette logo on all 65,878 seats. Each and every seat has the Gillette logo on it, and they taped over every one. Similarly, in many of the areas of the stadiums, there are condiments, like Ketchup. FIFA has been taping over all the information that indicated it was Heinz. The bottles and market share are so dominant, that it allowed people to still see it was Heinz Ketchup. Images of this taping were going viral, but that was not enough; the Kraft Heinz team put out an unofficial stadium ketchup image below to tie the virality back to the purchase:

Talk about a way to capitalize on a moment! That one activation was impressive on its own, but they have pulled off at least another one. In Europe, Ranch Dressing is not widely available, for now. Europeans are making up a large majority of the tourists coming to the United States for the World Cup, and are discovering, or rediscovering, the wonderful dressing that is Ranch. Naturally, they want to take some home with them, but TSA rules prevent large bottles of liquid. Still, it has been enough of an issue that the TSA issued a warning against trying to fly home from the World Cup with bottles of ranch dressing. Once again, Kraft swiftly responded:

Another great response and one that will most likely help close the gap with Hidden Valley, the dominant player in the Ranch space. However, the beauty in both of these moves is that it is more of a marketing mindset rather than an operations issue. Both re-use existing infrastructure, tweaked slightly to the moment, not a major lift. Starting with the Ranch, that item is most likely already existing. Kraft most likely sells it to restaurants and other quick food service accounts. It is brilliant to connect the moment and the existing product. Who knows if anyone will actually be able to buy it, but it generated a ton of buzz. Similarly, the Ketchup example drew on a past Heinz campaign; it has to be Heinz, depicting restaurants filling up Heinz bottles with competitors (something places actually do) since Heinz has such strong brand affinity with customers. Both recent campaigns were made possible by re-purposing existing content to meet the moment, not trying to force the creation of content for the moment.

That is the genius of what Todd Kaplan, the CMO of Kraft Heinz, has been able to build culturally. Kraft has always been putting out content like this since they have that mindset. I highly recommend that brands, regardless of size, engrain that mindset in their content strategy. Re-purpose existing content to meet the moment. Do not try to force the creation of content for the moment. Your life will be much easier, and your finance teams will thank you.

Most things in this world have some sort of brand associated with them, that is how humans decide what to buy and what not to buy. Even when something is a store brand or private label, you are trusting, or associating, the brand of the store you are buying it at with that unbranded product. However, the one area where that really hasn’t been the case is the meat, seafood, and produce departments at the grocery store. Brand is around the actual specifications of the product, not a traditional brand. That has been changing recently in the Meat and Seafood space, and now seems to be applying to the produce space too.

This past week, I was walking by Juice Press, a juice and smoothie store, and the sign below outside the door caught my eye:

In the bottom right, you can see the logo for Zespri, which is a company that sells and markets Kiwifruit. The Sungold is a newer variety, and they are trying to get more people to try it, as well as associate a brand with this particular Kiwi. Getting people to try new produce can be challenging, so they are incorporating it in a smoothie and giving one away with every order. A very smart distribution plan to get kiwis in bellies. Overall, I think we will see more branded produce going forward.

In Europe, TheFork enables reservations for over 50,000 restaurants across eleven countries. It is both customer-facing and providing back end software for restaurants. This week, American Express announced its intent to acquire TheFork as it pushes further into the restaurant space, adding to the acquisitions of Tock and Resy. The goal of this acquisition would be to bolster the offerings in Europe overall to try to get more signups for credit cards. European credit card penetration lags the United States significantly. In the United States, roughly 82% of adults have a credit card, compared to an average of 38% in Europe. It will be interesting to see if this is able to drive more sign-ups for American Express, or if it ends up falling flat. The purchase price is around $700M, so that would be a significant amount to shell out for no return.

This week, Ahold Delhaize announced the nomination of Claire Peters as CEO of Ahold Delhaize USA. Ahold supermarkets in the United States include Food Lion, Giant, Hannaford, and Stop and Shop. Given that this is such a high-profile appointment, I thought it would be interesting to dive into Claire’s background.

Given that Ahold has international roots, it is not surprising that it turned from outside the United States to lead the business. In order to compete with the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Aldi, and Trader Joe’s, this business is going to need some ingenuity. However, that goes both ways, as a lack of knowledge of how the US grocery system works could be harmful too. Either way, going to be fascinating to follow.

Every quarter or so, Dan Frommer and Coefficient Capital publish what I consider appointment-reading, The Consumer Trends report. Typically, the report looks across the entire industry, but the latest report focused solely on Alcohol. Despite what the headlines say, Gen Z is consuming alcohol in very similar patterns to past generations. Here are two of my favorite slides below, highly recommend checking out the full report!

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