Heinz, the UK’s favourite baked beans brand, has taken out a page of The Guardian to issue an apology for taking 150 years to launch a new range of pasta sauces.
The apology to the British public and Heinz’ founder Henry Heinz for not creating the pasta sauce despite its focus on tomato products.
However, the brand explained it would probably be “the best pasta sauce you’ve ever tasted”, assuring it was worth the wait “because nothing so ridiculously good, has come so ridiculously late”.
READ MORE: Heinz unveils interactive campaign against child hunger
The move to a pasta sauce range has been deemed an important step in strategy to expand into new categories.
“Despite our extensive agriculture heritage and tomato expertise, this is the first Heinz pasta sauce launched in the UK —a market where Heinz is annually ranked amongst the most loved food brands,” Kraft-Heinz new ventures director Caio Fontenele said.
“It was natural to have launched a pasta sauce, but we didn’t. Yes, we are ridiculously late.”
The creative agency behind the campaign, Wunderman Thompson Spain, played on the iconicity of Heinz with a “powerful and simple” advertisement.
“Consumers love it when a love brand like Heinz has the ability to laugh at itself. Before this, the brand had never released a range of pasta sauces in the UK, despite the fact that spaghetti Bolognese is one of the most popular dishes in the world and the third most-consumed dish in the UK,” Wunderman Thompson executive creative director Paco Badia said.
“It was the perfect excuse for us to play up the brand’s tomato credentials with the launch, including how they produce their own tomato seeds, in the most Heinz-way possible, with a subtle and intelligent sense of humour.”
Currently, the campaign is supported by digital, social media and in the public – including a billboard in Leicester Square advertising the seven sauces along with the caption “150 years late. 7 ways to apologise”.
The news comes as Kraft Heinz warned of further prices hikes last month due to soaring inflation of raw material and transportation costs.
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