It might be the only food in the world with an official speed limit (0.028mph) but Heinz Tomato Ketchup is about to travel faster and further than any sauce before it. Today marks the start of a dynamic global initiative to supercharge the growth of Heinz Tomato Ketchup and the sauces category around world. With worldwide sales of $1.2 billion and a stronghold in markets as diverse as Canada and Thailand, Heinz Tomato Ketchup is already a global icon with a special place in millions of people's hearts. But now the brand is gearing up to fulfill its true destiny - to be on every plate, on every table. Starting this month, the brand embarks on a daring programme of activity
designed to change the way the world adds flavour to its food.

There are six key elements of the relaunch:

1. Positioning
In the past, Heinz Ketchup has been positioned to appeal to different consumer groups in different parts of the world. But as a world brand, Heinz Ketchup will benefit most from a unified positioning and a single set of values. The brand will speak loudest if it speaks with one voice. And the voice
Heinz Ketchup will speak with is the voice of the world's youth - the consumer group which truly transcends national borders.

2. Advertising
The positioning will be supported with a $50 million global advertising campaign created by Leo Burnett. The campaign uses irony and humour to reflect Heinz Ketchup's distinctive, laconic, cool and confident personality. "Some of the Heinz Tomato Ketchup never comes out," begins one ad. "It just stays stuck in there, and we can only look at it. This part of the ketchup will never be understood. This part of the ketchup has issues. Heinz Ketchup. Some of it has issues."
In the U.K. the campaign breaks in September on national television. Poster sites will also be part of the media mix.

3. Usage Occasions
The advertising will encourage a new mind-set about Heinz Ketchup and the role it plays in everyone's everyday eating. Promotions with new and traditional host foods will reinforce the message at the point of sale and in the home.

4. Label Design
A global brand needs a global visual identity. The many faces of Heinz Ketchup around the world will become one. New label designs have been developed by brand design consultancy jkr (jones knowles ritchie). The harmonised designs reinforce the brand's iconic status with the ideal balance
of typography and graphics. The 57 Varieties slogan makes a triumphant return to the neck label, and there's a cleaner, clearer back label too.

5. Range
The elements that contribute to the brand's world-famous design have been extended across all bottles in the new range. Until now the European range has lacked cohesion. Different bottle shapes
and diverse label dimensions have served to reduce impact on shelf and diffuse the brand's identity.
Not any more. A completely new range will be introduced to create a close-knit family of 12 bottle sizes (down from 24). Heinz's distinctive fluted glass bottle shape is an icon, an instantly recognised hallmark of the real thing in ketchup. That's why a new fluted squeeze bottle will be introduced later in the year, bringing even greater levels impact and interest to the sauces fixture
and achieving greater levels of synergy for the Heinz range. The 1.14 kg squeeze bottle will be discontinued and replaced with two new sizes which better meet consumer needs - a 1kg bottle and a 1.35kg bottle.

6. Consumer Communications
6i. Schools Football
Heinz Tomato Ketchup is recognised as the premier supporter of English schools football. The first-ever Heinz Ketchup Cup final was played at Highbury on 17th May and broadcast on Channel 4 on 5th June. Next year the brand will expand its support into Scottish schools. Research shows that the sponsorship is already encouraging a positive reappraisal of the brand among teenage boys.

6ii. Lycopene
There's more and more evidence to suggest that lycopene, the substance that makes tomatoes red, has significant health benefits, particularly when the tomatoes have been processed into ketchup, soup and other products. Several studies suggest a link between increased lycopene consumption and reduced risk of heart disease and cancer. Heinz will be investing heavily in research and communications to bring the lycopene message home to consumers.

The world's favourite ketchup...

These are the six key elements of the relaunch of Heinz Tomato Ketchup. It's a package that will bring more value and more excitement to the sauces category than it has seen in a very long time.
The world's number-one ketchup is on a mission to change the way the world adds flavour to food. Heinz is on its way to becoming the world's favourite sauce ... on every plate and on every table.

A HISTORY OF HEINZ TOMATO KETCHUP

Language experts continue to debate the origin of the word ketchup. Some believe it comes from the French word 'escabeche' (meaning marinade or sauce for cooking); others, that it has a Far East origin. The most favoured theory is that Ketchup derives from the Chinese word 'ke tsiap,' meaning 'brine of pickled fish.' The word Catchup is defined in a late seventeenth century dictionary as a 'high East India Sauce.' Today Ketchup is still spelled Catsup and Catchup in some parts of the U.S. An 1831 edition of Domestic Chemist observed that the word indicates 'a sauce of which the name can be pronounced by everybody but spelled by nobody.' The 1727 edition of the Compleat Housewife includes a recipe for English Katchop. Ingredients include anchovies, shallots, vinegar, peppers, nutmeg, lemon peel and horseradish, but no tomatoes! Indeed the early ketchups were not tomato-based at all. The sauces masquerading under the name Ketchup were generally based on mushrooms, fish, seafood and even walnuts. Stale beer was often cited as a key ingredient, for preservation purposes, of course. These recipes were bequeathed by the English to her new colonies in America in the 18th century.

Tomatoes had been domesticated into the Central American diet during the sixteenth century and inevitably their influence spread north. In 1804 James Mease, a prominent Philadelphia scientist, wrote that "Love Apples made a fine catsup." (Love apples was a popular 18th century American term for tomatoes.) Three recipes appeared for tomato ketchup in the 1814 edition of The Universal Receipt Book and in 1817 Dr William Kitchiner published the first recipe for 'Tomata Catsup.' In 1829 New Englander Lydia Chiled reported that the best sort of ketchup was made from tomatoes.

The first commercial tomato ketchup was marketed by Bunker & Co. of New York in 1834, and many others followed its lead. Early production used as its base what were colloquially referred to as trimmings from canned tomato production - that is the rotten, green or diseased tomatoes and tomato segments which were rejected from the filling line.

In the early days Heinz, Noble & Company offered both tomato and walnut ketchups. Tomato ketchup did not become an important Heinz product until the 1880s when the renamed H.J. Heinz Company patented the now famous combination of keystone label, neck band, screw cap and octagonal bottle.

By 1905 Heinz produced over five million bottles of ketchup, increasing to 12 million bottles during 1906; and in 1908 sales reached $2.5 million, a phenomenal amount by the standards of the day. In 1896 The New York Times reported that Tomato Ketchup was the American National Condiment. The emergence of Heinz as the preeminent ketchup was largely due to the company's adoption of a preservative-free, pure foods policy in the early 1900s.

Against a background of increasing public anxiety about the safety and wholesomeness of preserved products, Heinz was able to steal a march on its competitors by guaranteeing unadulterated product. Indeed Henry Heinz helped form the Pure Food Act of 1906. In 1908 Heinz launched a national campaign for anti-preservative foods in order to nail home its advantage. Those noble principles live on today. Unlike many competitors, Heinz Tomato Ketchup remains free from artificial thickeners, preservatives and colourings. It wasn't until 1946 that Heinz Tomato Ketchup was first manufactured in the U.K., but by then it was already firmly established as a British family favourite. The increased distribution that home manufacture allowed meant that, slowly but surely, tomato ketchup started to displace brown sauce as the condiment of choice in Britain.

Today, the U.K. ketchup market is worth more than 105 million pounds - more than twice the size of the brown sauce market - and Heinz's share is 58 per cent. Advertising, of course, has played its part in sustaining the popularity of Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Stars including Vic Reeves, Beryl Reid and Julie Walters have all lent a hand, and so too has Friends star Matt LeBlanc who was featured in a famous 1980s ad in which a strategically placed bottle disgorged its contents from the top of a tall building onto his hot dog down below.

Company news release
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