Ad Campaign of the Week: Heinz Chicago Dog Sauce Campaign Appeals to Ketchup Fans

If you’re a ketchup fan, you probably don’t live in Chicago. The city is notorious for its Chicago style hot dogs, which do not include ketchup. And so many in the city are strongly against using ketchup at all. But a new campaign from Heinz is aiming to change that. The company created what it calls “Chicago Dog Sauce” and offered it to Chicagoans to put on their hot dogs. Spoiler alert: it’s ketchup. So what do viewers think of the ad and the campaign as a whole? We asked 1,000 respondents about their condiment buying habits and then tested the impact of the Heinz ad campaign.

Condiment Buyers

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest online survey, 8% of respondents said they usually purchase condiments a few times per week. 39% buy condiments a few times per month. 34% do so a few times every three months. 14% do so a few times per year. 2% said they buy condiments less often than once per year. And 3% aren’t condiment buyers at all.Of those who purchase condiments at least on occasion, 70% said that they use Heinz products regularly, making it the most popular condiment brand of those listed. Kraft was second most popular in terms of regular consumers, with 58%. In addition, 42% of respondents said they’ve seen commercials or video ads for condiment brands within the past week.

Heinz Chicago Dog Sauce

Overall, 40% of condiment consumers said they would be certain or practically certain about choosing Heinz for their next condiment purchase. And 30% said it would be very probable. Of those who viewed the Heinz Chicago ad, 47% said they would be practically certain about choosing Heinz for their next condiment purchase. And 28% said it would be very probable. Additionally, 91% of respondents who viewed the Heinz ad said that they enjoy ketchup. Of those respondents, 47% said they would be practically certain about choosing Heinz for their next condiment purchase. And 29% said it would be very probable.

Brand Attributes

In general, consumers seem to associate the Heinz brand with words like quality, classic, tasty, great, delicious and reliable. Those who viewed the Heinz Chicago ad were a bit more likely to include words like tasty, delicious and best.

Key Takeaways

The Heinz Chicago Dog Sauce ad campaign seems to have the potential to make a positive impact for the Heinz brand and for consumers’ buying habits. The ad was, unsurprisingly, a bit more likely to have a positive impact for those who already enjoy ketchup. But there are so few people who don’t like it that targeting it to only that audience wouldn’t make much of a difference. In addition, Heinz is already the most popular condiment brand. So a campaign like this one that might encourage people to use ketchup more often in situations where they might not have used it before could be a good strategy just to get existing customers to purchase more often. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Heinz Ketchup by Mike Mozart under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on July 19 via AYTM’s online survey panel.