Title: What Were They Thinking? The Day Ketchup Crossed The Line From Perfect
Headings: What Were They Thinking? The Day Ketchup Crossed The Line From Perfect To Purple
What Were They Thinking? The Day Ketchup Crossed The Line From Perfect To Purple
Heinz ketchup is an iconic American brand, practically perfect in every way. Why mess with it?
Where They Went Wrong
The Takeaways

Content: Heinz ketchup is an iconic American brand, practically perfect in every way. Why mess with it? In 2000, that’s exactly what Heinz decided to do, when it turned the ketchup world upside-down when they began rolling our vibrant, crazy-colored ketchup in purple, pink, orange, teal, and blue varieties. Heinz EZ Squirt’s first color entry was ‘Blastin’ Green’ and was created as a promotional ketchup in support of the first Shrek movie, and moms and kids came running. Each new color resulted in incremental sales volume. In fact, more than 25 million bottles of colored ketchup were sold, helping Heinz capture an all-time high of 60% of the U.S. ketchup market, before softening sales resulted in the EZ Squirt brand being pulled from the shelves by January 2006. Where They Went Wrong
1. Target Audience – There’s no-doubt that this kid-friendly ketchup is fun and exciting. Heck, even the package shape is ergonomically designed for young kids’ hands. But the real purchase driver on this one was the movie tie-in.