Heinz is creating quite a stir with its latest UK advertising campaign for a Deli sauce product. Read how a gay kiss is creating significant PR benefits for the brand, and achieving strong consumer cut-through in an otherwise cluttered product category marketing environment.
Ian Johnson, Out Now
June 23, 2008
TOPICS: New Heinz Deli Mayo TV commercial with a gay kiss. Heinz advertising campaign. UK gay and lesbian marketing. PR. Public relations. Snickers Superbowl. Snickers Super Bowl PR disaster. Heinz UK gay kiss TV commercial. Heinz adopts a smart use of a gay kiss them in its marketing and advertising campaign for a sauce product in the UK market.I am fond of saying that good gay marketing is a lot like surfing.
Just as with surfing, you have a platform upon which you need to stand -- your marketing strategy if you will -- and you have an intended destination on the shore.
But of course your final actual destination can be determined not only by your ability to surf effectively, but also by the actions of the water upon which you are riding.
This body of water on which we marketers all are surfers is of course the marketing environment in which we operate. We can surf in a direction but we are also responsible for reading -- and riding -- the wave if we are to successfully achieve our marketing objectives.
If the market moves, you must move with it -- or be left behind the wave.
A great example of successfully riding the marketing wave -- right on the edge of both the social and the marketing zeitgeist -- is the new Heinz UK TV commercial that features a gay twist at the end of the advertisement.
Of course, as you will see in this Heinz gay-themed advertising, this is not a gay marketing advertisement at all.
It is a mainstream advertising campaign for a Heinz product selling into a traditionally very cluttered and noisy advertising and marketing environment.
Achieving cut-through and brand recall in the food sauces product category is notoriously difficult to achieve and this Heinz Deli Sauce advertisement in the UK market is doing this very effectively.
Heinz Deli Mayo -- Mum gets a kiss
What this ad does is position the brand as being family friendly but also modern and gay-comfortable.
The message is clear -- Mums who use the product will be giving their family the best authentic New York Deli sauce on the market.
And the gay twist at the end of the advertisement means you remember this advertising and will likely look for and watch the commercial the next time it airs on TV.
Even better, with the clear message being communicated that the product is authentic tasting, you may well look for it in the supermarket and purchase it.
What does this have to do with surfing?
Well, if we compare this Heinz gay kiss to the PR disaster of the Omnicom Snickers Super Bowl gay kiss advertising of last year, it becomes much clearer how Heinz is surfing the gay marketing wave well, and that Snickers rightly got dumped by totally misunderstanding the state of play in the overall marketing and social environment.
Today, in the UK, to be gay is no longer a negative thing. It is positively mainstream and most people, and political parties, are supportive of gay and lesbian community members. By understanding this, Heinz has been able to cleverly transpose a male New York deli worker into the role of "Mum" for their gay kiss and have it play well on almost every level. It could even be argued that it takes a positive view of the social good of UK lesbian and gay Civil Partnership laws.
Riding the gay marketing wave
A progressive marketing stance indeed, and one where the brand is surfing the crest of the social and marketing wave -- not too far ahead of trends, but sufficiently socially cutting-edge as to give the brand and the campaign a modern luster.
Compare that to the marketing, PR and socially out-of-touch campaign that was last year's Snickers TV commercial produced by an Omnicom agency for Mars' Snickers brand of candy.
The advertising took a wholly negative view of two men accidentally engaging in a gay kiss, and offered viewers the pay-off that one of them could hurt or even bash the other man as a result of the gay kiss.
The resulting outrage was well deserved, and suggests that Omnicom and their associated agencies badly misread the prevailing marketing and social wave.
To portray gay men in a negative manner in 2007 was a big marketing and advertising mistake. To compound this by overtly encouraging homophobia and even violence against gay men simply made things worse for the Snickers brand.
It is hard to imagine the Snickers Super Bowl commercial ever being one that most people could endorse, but the extent of the Snickers marketing mistake is made even clearer by the latest gay kiss effort by Heinz.
When it comes to good marketing -- gay or otherwise -- you need to be on the crest of the marketing wave, not too far in front, nor too far behind, but ideally surfing right on the crest of the marketing wave.
Or, as Snickers discovered to their chagrin, risk being dumped on by it -- very publicly, and embarrasingly.
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