With fun ideas like the Love Lid, Heinz turns a condiment into something people can talk about, personalize and play with.

I seem to write about Heinz a lot, which is weird considering I don’t eat that much ketchup.

But the company keeps doing stuff worth thinking about.

The latest is the Love Lid, created with Wieden+Kennedy London. It’s an adjustable ketchup bottle cap with three settings: Like, Love and Crazy Love.

Image: Kraft Heinz

Turn the lid valve and you control how much ketchup comes out.

It’s a tiny product innovation built around something Heinz discovered people have surprisingly intense opinions about: how much ketchup belongs on their food.

Rather than declare a correct answer, Heinz turned the argument into the product.

It’s almost as brilliant as when Heinz invented the upside-down squeeze bottle.

There’s an interesting pattern here.

Earlier this year I wrote about Heinz bringing back the classic glass bottle, and a weird collab with Heineken.

Then there was that 65-foot hot dog sculpture in Times Square that Heinz visually “fixed” by positioning a billboard above it pouring on the missing ketchup.

Now you can calibrate your ketchup according to your degree of devotion.

These ideas accomplish something larger than generating publicity. They continually reinforce the behaviour Heinz wants to own.

Fries need ketchup. Hot dogs need ketchup. And apparently the appropriate quantity deserves its own control mechanism.

In I Need That, I write about how products become more compelling when they’re connected to existing needs, behaviours and rituals. Heinz has a mature product with little left to explain, so it keeps finding fresh ways to make those rituals more visible.

And there are signs the investment is working.

Kraft Heinz spent much of the past decade losing U.S. market share, but its “Taste Elevation” business, which includes ketchup, has now reversed direction. More than 80% of that portfolio’s U.S. sales were gaining or holding share in Q1, rising to 87% in March.

The company specifically credits product and packaging improvements, increased marketing and new product-focused creative, including investment behind Heinz. 

That’s worth noting because exactly NONE of these Heinz ideas tries to reinvent ketchup.

They keep reinventing the occasions, rituals and all the little interactions around it.

When you already own a category association this powerful, there’s huge value in finding new ways to remind people why.

Even if people like me keep writing about a condiment we barely eat.

If you’d like help creating and marketing products people feel compelled to buy, the product marketing consultants at Graphos Product can help.