The brief mandated a very traditional child/mum/beans story, so we used Jack & The Beanstalk to lift it out of the kitchen. Directed by Jim Field Smith.

CREATING THE ‘IT HAS TO BE’ CAMPAIGN

I wrote ‘It Has to Be’ while I was CD of Heinz at AMV, from 2008 to 2012, and I’m happy to see it’s now the global platform.

The business problem was that people saw Heinz as old-fashioned, and in the Credit crunch, struggled to justify the premium, when own-brand was seen as satisfactory.

The solution was to prompt them of a belief they already had, deep down – of the trust and warmth they had for Heinz, from years of good experiences, an emotional and rational belief that Heinz is better than own-brand.

We triggered this by treating Heinz product as icons, but in a believable way. ‘It Has to Be’ launched with the ‘Invisible Bottle’ Ketchup commercial, in which viewers proved to themselves that ‘it has to be’ Heinz, by knowing instantly what the product was, without seeing it.

We continued the ‘It Has to Be’ idea across a brand campaign and product-specific work for Salad Cream, Beans, and Soups.

To make the brand feel more contemporary, executions surprised the audience, rejecting traditional narratives in favour of invisible products, an ad set totally in a fridge, a soundtrack of people blowing soup, and an ad with two men kissing which created headlines worldwide.