Heinz’s Talk to the Plant Campaign
Back in 2008, Heinz racked up 18,000 participants and blog posts all over the world in a mere two weeks without spending a single dime on advertisement. How did they do this? The idea was simple.
Mission: Communicate global tagline, “No one grows ketchup like Heinz”
Idea: Let’s prove it and not just say it
Solution: Test the effect of human voice on plant growth through an interactive experiment
We’ve all heard of the theory that plants grow better if you talk to them. And the marketers of Heinz figured why not try it out while strategically communicating their tagline that “no one grows ketchup like Heinz”.
Essentially the experiment consisted of two sound proof rooms and two tomato plants that received the same amount of light, water, and heat. The test plant was equipped with a speaker and a microphone while the control plant remained as it was. Participants could go onto talktotheplant.com and write their desired message to the plant and the voice synthesis device would send a live stream from the site to the speaker. The experiment was simple, fun, and allowed anyone to speak to the plant and anyone to listen. The plants grew along with the number of participants.
They also kept an up-to-date Talk to the Plant – Behind the Scenes blog that tracked the plant growth, followed the development, as well as the technical difficulties. The experiment ran for six weeks though the evaluation phase afterwards prolonged the experiment for another two week – resulting in a two month long campaign.
Result of the Experiment
With 18,774 messages in total the test plant grew a whopping 153 cm while the control plant grew……… 146cm! Though the results of this experiment weren’t as dramatic as participants would have hoped, I would say this campaign was very successful in that it makes people think about what goes into something as simple as their ketchup. Additionally, the interactive experience basically guarantees that participants will tell their friends, but more importantly participants will have developed a connection and come back perhaps multiple times to check on the progress of their lovely tomato plant.
