Heinz flavor mashups
Above are some of Heinz’s flavor mashup sauces. These have been around for a while, but I recently saw this photo on Twitter and was reminded of the horror of this suite.
In short, this has to be one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Almost all of these names are awful. Mayomust? Mayo must… do what? Mayocue? Would that lead me to think "mayonnaise + barbecue sauce”? There’s no way that it was worth creating these mashup names instead of just writing ‘Mayo + BBQ sauce’ on the label.
The worst one has to be the rightmost: Kranch. The word itself is gross. It sounds gross. But why do they suddenly use the ‘K’ part of ‘ketchup’ when they used the ‘chup’ part in Mayochup? If you ask me, Ranchup sounds way less gross than Kranch. And because they made this weird choice, they created a problem for themselves. Do they color ‘Kranch’ half red and half blue (since it’s half of each sauce, and the other ones are colored half-and-half), or do they only color the K red (since that’s the ‘ketchup’ part of the word, and the rest of it is the ‘Ranch’ part)? Ultimately they stuck with the half-and-half, which I think was the wrong choice. The concept of ketchup + Ranch is already hanging on by a thread when I see the word ‘Kranch,” but now that the colors aren’t true to their respective sauces it takes me several seconds to figure out what is in this mashup. Actually… now that I think about it, I have no confirmation that this sauce is actually ketchup + Ranch. It could be something else entirely.
Which brings me to my next point: they should have written out the sauce names below. The mashup names clearly don’t speak for themselves, and even if they did I would still be saying this. It doesn’t have to be prominently written; the mashup names can still be the stars of the show (even though they really shouldn’t be). But instead, what did they write on every single bottle? ‘Saucy sauce.’ The frustration I feel is indescribable. Maybe it’s a fun reminder that this sauce is two sauces in one. Wow, exciting. But that information is redundant and unhelpful; in fact, it’s actively counterproductive, since the alternative is writing out both sauce names and helping a customer understand what they are buying/putting into their bodies. Label space is so precious—there’s not room to put clever jokes(?) instead of helpful information. Also, the joke is not that clever. And putting the same phrase on six bottles makes it especially not funny.
This campaign is poorly done. It feels like the creators did not think it through and/or are afraid to tell each other when something is bad.
But after tearing them apart, I’d like to add some nice comments. I think the concept of selling mixed sauces is quite smart! I always see my friends mixing ketchup and mayo to eat their fries. I think Heinz made a good move in identifying and meeting the demand for half-and-half sauces. And some of these flavors sound pretty tasty to me! (Though I have to question the choice to put mayonnaise in 5/6 of these sauces...) Also, I like the border colors which reflect the contents of the bottle. It really helps tie the concept together and even compensates a little for the failure of the mashup names. I like how they went with a light blue for Kranch, even though the sauce itself is orange. It really does call forth the idea of Ranch. But that’s pretty much the only nice thing I have to say about that rightmost product. Gross.
