How Heinz used precision and the pratfall effect to make its ketchup unforgettable

This episode dives into the behavioral science behind Heinz’s iconic brand. Discover how specificity, self-deprecating honesty, and inviting consumer participation help make Heinz ketchup more memorable, trusted, and irresistible at the table.

Transcript

MichaelAaron Flicker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Behavioral Science

for Brands, a podcast where we bridge the gap between academics and

practical marketing. Every week we sit down and go deep behind the

science of some of America's most successful brands. I'm MichaelAaron

Flicker.

Richard Shotton: And I'm Richard Shotton.

MichaelAaron Flicker: And today we're diving deep into one of

America's most beloved condiments.

We're talking about a company that has been at the dining room table in

America for almost 150 years - heinz ketchup. It's literally the topping in

America, Richard, that school children and adults alike grab for almost

always. Let's get into it. Before we get into today's episode, Richard and

I wanted to share something with you all that we've been working on for

over two years.

Richard Shotton: Yes. On September the 30th, we are releasing our

biggest collaboration yet, and it's called Hacking the Human Mind.

MichaelAaron Flicker: It's a book that [00:01:00] dives into 17 brands,

just like we do here on the podcast, but goes into a lot more detail and

we unpack over 30 behavioral science principles in the book.

Richard Shotton: We've designed it to be really practical, super easy to

read with lots of ideas that you can apply at work.

Robert Cialdini has read one of the early copies, and he said he couldn't

put it down.

MichaelAaron Flicker: Rory Sutherland was very generous, and he

said, it's a book for the ages. You can pre-order it right now on Amazon

by just typing in the title, Hacking the Human Mind, or after September

30th, wherever books are sold. So Richard, today we're diving into Heinz

Ketchup, as we were saying in the opening.

It's one of America's favorite condiments and really. A fascinating study

for today's podcast. Let me give a little bit of background, like we like todo, and then we'll jump into some of the behavioral science. So Heinz

Ketchup, one of the most iconic [00:02:00] brands with over 150 years of

history. It was founded in 1876, making it both older than the Eiffel

Tower and the light bulb.

And for all that time, the base formula has not really changed. The

recipe is largely tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices, and it does

change depending on where it's sold. Today the company produces over

5 700 different products sold in almost every country in the world. But

since we like beginnings in this podcast and we'd like to learn where

things come from the story of Heinz starts with its founder Henry Heinz,

when he's 25 years old, and he's living at home with his mother in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

That's where he creates his first product. He calls it a pure and superior

graded horseradish using his mother's [00:03:00] recipe. And like we see

so many times in our examination of other brands, whether they're great

marketers or they just have unique insights into buyers. Hez does a

number of things differently early in his career that set up a lot of his

success.

So that clear horse radish that he took from his mother's recipe, he puts

it in clear glass to display his purity and quality compared to what most

of the other folks on the shelf were doing, which was putting their horse

radish in dark bottles, brown bottles to cover up the quality of the

ingredients.

In his ketchup product, he changed the traditional spelling of catsup, C-

A-T-S-U-P, to ketchup, K-E-T-C-H-U-P, to be distinctive again on the

shelf. And he even comes up, his early, early winner is Pickles. He ends

up calling himself the Pickle King because [00:04:00] he wanted to be

remembered as something really unique in the in, in the market.

But for all his marketing ideas, and there's even more in biographies

about him and the history about him. The one that stands out as having

some of the most enduring nature is coming up with the 57. And

originally it was 57 varieties was a slogan that he started early on to

attract customers. It's still on the bottle today.

We're gonna come back and talk more about that, but interestingly, it's a

completely made up number. As the story goes, Heinz was visiting New

York City in 1896 and he sees an advertisement for 21 styles of shoes.He found it memorable and he thought attaching a number to his own

brand would help it stick with consumers.

So the company carved 57 on [00:05:00] hillsides as train passengers

would drive by and say 57 good things for the table. It was that line was

featured on an electric billboard in New York City in 1900. It was six

stories tall, 1200 fluorescent light bulbs, and it had a 43 foot long

flashing Heinz pickle. So you know, a lot of marketing flare.

A lot of intrigue and using this 57 originally was meant to show all the

varieties, but it's a number that is interesting both on where they put it on

the package and in the number itself. Richard, why don't you help us

unpack what's going on here with this specificity?

Richard Shotton: As you say, there's, there's an awful lot going on and

I think some of the success of Heinz is due to that sense of scale and

grandeur and, and marketing flare, but also I think he was right in the

fact that a very precise specific number sticks in the [00:06:00] mind

more than a round general one, would we really be talking about Heinz

50 or Heinz 60? Now, there is something about this precision that makes

it more, more powerful. Now, that's not just an opinion. There's quite a

lot of evidence about the power of precise numbers. So there's a brilliant

study from Schindler and Yauch Rutgers University.

So 2006 study, recruit a group of people and they show them an ad for a

deodorant. Now, sometimes they say the deodorant reduces

perspiration by 50%, so that is a round number, a general number.

Sometimes they say it reduces perspiration by either 47 or 53%. So he

gives these similar numbers, sometimes a precise claim, sometimes a

round of claim, and then he asks people how accurate.

So they think the Jonce claim is, and how credible do people think the

claim is? And he sees a very clear pattern. [00:07:00] If people have

seen the precise number, they think it's 5% more accurate, sorry, 5%

more credible and 10% more accurate than people who saw the the

round number. So the argument here is. When people see round

numbers, they think they've just been plucked out of the air.

They think they are being communicated from a position of ignorance. If

see people see a very precise number, they think that person knows

what they're talking about, there must be a very good reason why

they've picked such a, a, a precise thing to focus on. So I think Heinzwas onto something here, and some of it, as we say, was the flare, but

some of it comes down to the power of precision.

MichaelAaron Flicker: And we've talked about this before, episode 13

had Dyson, and he uses a similar example of precision. You wanna

remind everybody what we talked about in Dyson's episode.

Richard Shotton: Yeah. So it, it's a lovely one. It goes all the way

through. Dyson's advertising their pr, their website. Even. In fact, the

very first line of James [00:08:00] Dyson's autobiography, they all talk

about the fact they went through 5,127 prototypes before they gotta the

bagless vacuum.

Now again, he didn't say 5,000. He didn't say five and a half thousand.

He was very, very precise and the precision is part of the, the impact,

the number as the Schindler study search shows.

MichaelAaron Flicker: So check out Dyson's episode if you want to

hear more about how Dyson uses precision in their marketing. And

Heinz, not just 57.

Heinz has tactically used this point in some of their advertising. They talk

about the slowness of the poor, of the ketchup at exactly point zero two

eight miles per hour. That's how fast the ketchup will come out of the

bottle. So they're, they're, they're using this precision not just in 57

varieties, but in other advertising they're doing.

Richard Shotton: So it's a regular thing they're doing, but that puts

them, I think, at odds with an awful lot of advertising, an awful lot of

advertisers talking. They [00:09:00] generalities. I think we could learn

from Heinz, we could learn from Dyson and try and add precision in

where we can. So don't say you've got. A million customers say You've

got 1.1 million customers.

Don't say 90% of our customers give us a five star review, say 91.3%.

We are in an environment, unfortunately, as commercial advertisers

where most people don't trust us. Most people don't believe us. So you

wanna be working with these innate biases. And precision's probably

one of the simplest ones you can do to generate that sense of trust.

And you know, as Heinz also realized that that boost of memorability.MichaelAaron Flicker: Yeah, I think there's also, you know, so we, we

have this study that shows that there's, it was a 5% lift. In, was that the

number?

Richard Shotton: Yeah, five in credibility, 10% inaccuracy.

MichaelAaron Flicker: And it's interesting that it does add just a smidge

of friction to understand what is being communicated when you see that

that tho those precision in the numbers.[00:10:00]

Normally we talk about how removing as much friction as possible is the,

is the preferred route. But in this instance, a precise number does cause

a little bit of friction, doesn't it? Yeah,

Richard Shotton: you're absolutely right. And that friction does lead to

memorability. There's a whole body of work that suggests that, and I

think Heinz have harnessed this too.

So you talking a few years back now, and we'll put these in the show

notes, but there were these wonderful ads they ran. I think they might

have been even inspired by Mad Madmen where it was a picture of

some chips. And then it just said, pass the Heinz. Now what's interesting

there is virtually ev, every other advertiser would've shown chips.

Smothered in ketchup, or you might say catchup, but I have no idea

what that, that word is.

MichaelAaron Flicker: We're both ketchup.

Richard Shotton: Yeah. Yeah. We're both ketchups. Okay. Okay. What,

what Heinz did so clever though, is let you imagine the pouring of the,

the, the product on those chips. Now, that I [00:11:00] think is a very

lateral interpretation of what psychologists know as the, the generation

effect.

So the original study was done well back in 1978 at the University of

Toronto by Norman Slamecka and Peter Graf, and they showed people

pairs of words. So, some people might see rapid fast, other people saw

rapid FAS blank. Both groups were asked to try and remember these

words and what. RAF and ska found was that the people who saw the

uncompleted words, they remembered about 15% more.So they called this the Generation Effect because they argued if you

make it too easy for people. To kind of imbibe your messaging, it just

washes over them. But if you involve the audience, if you [00:12:00] put

this little bit of friction in it this time, the friction is the audience has to

generate the answer themselves.

And that act of effort, that little bit of processing power that makes the

information far, far stickier. So. Precision and then this generation

effects. These are two similar tactics that Heinz have used across the

years, both of which embed that message that little bit, little bit more

strongly.

MichaelAaron Flicker: You know, it's it, it's almost a takeaway that we

talk around in a lot of these podcasts, but.

But it's almost worth taking a moment and, and focusing on it, which is,

there's no one golden rule, there's no one magic bias. It's about how you

apply the behavioral science insights we talk about in these episodes to

your business case. So. Should all friction always be removed? This is a

great example of both both of these examples of where we really

shouldn't remove all the friction and a little [00:13:00] bit of friction

increases memorability and, and, and it's more about looking at the body

of, of, of insights that we have access to the body of academic research

we have access to and understanding the.

Broad business problems that you're facing and trying to match them up.

Richard Shotton: Yeah, I, I, I, I, I think you're right there. I think, I think

it's a, a really interesting example. And, and the other part is trying to

make a message memorable. It's not that there is a. Single solution.

Well, you could use precision, you could use the generation effect.

There's also things like this idea of concreteness that we are much more

likely to remember words that we can visualize. So I, I almost see

behavioral science as this suite of tools that the marketer has to pick, not

just the right one for the right problem, but also. Even when you're very

specific about the problem, say memorability, there's still different

tactics.

You know, you just want to try, which [00:14:00] ones help you solve the

problem. And I, I, I really love that variety because I don't think accepting

behavioral science means that you as a Marty or you as a copywriter,suddenly lose your, your role. You know, it's your role to pick the, pick

the right study.

MichaelAaron Flicker: Richard, you know, we had a great guest on

earlier this year, Nancy Hart, who spoke about how.

Applying behavioral science principles to business problems. The best

way to know if they're working is testing them and not just testing them

by asking people how would they feel about this, but actually testing the

reactions people have when they don't know they're being tested. We'll

put the episode number in the show notes but it's a great.

Way to approach testing to know if you're really getting the results that

you want with the behavioral science principles you're using.

Richard Shotton: Absolutely, absolutely. [00:15:00]

MichaelAaron Flicker: So Richard. We've talked about these two pri,

these two biases, but there's a third one we prepared for today and it

comes to one of our favorite behavioral science principles.

That's the pratfall effect.

Richard Shotton: Yeah. So what Heinz are doing, you mentioned

around the use of precision when they talk about the slowness of their

product. I think you could argue slowness when it comes to a food is. A

bit of a flaw, like most people want their ketchup straight away. So at first

it feels a bit strange that people might a consumer sorry, a brand might

emphasize this problem, but we've talked in previous episodes about the

pratfall effects, which is essentially the idea that if you admit that there is

a flaw, you become more appealing and also you become more

believable.

We've around.

What floor you admit is crucial and [00:16:00] we've always made a

logical argument that you need to pick a flaw that has a mirror strength.

So, you know stellar Archis used to go out and say, reassuringly

expensive. The floor is that they are expensive and the assumption is

therefore, that they're high quality with he.The floor is there slow. And we often think things that are slow are

gonna be argued. There's a phenomenal study that, I mean, recently

we've become aware of by GERD Bonner at the University of Bielefeld in

Germany, which actually proves this idea about the importance of a

related flaw. So what he did back in 2003 recruits 131 people and he

shows them an ad for a restaurant.

Now on virtually all aspects, the ad is the same, but one thing changes.

So first set of people just hear about the [00:17:00] positives of the

restaurant, that it's got this like cozy atmosphere and they rate it. The

kind of appeal of going at 4.29. The next group. Hear the same positive

that it has a co cozy atmosphere, but they hear an unrelated negative

feature, so they hear that it doesn't have dedicated parking, so it's

unrelated to the coziness.

Now, interestingly, as the pratfall effect suggests, there is a slight

increase in appeal, so up to 4.51 now, but what's super interesting, and

this is completely new that we've never discussed before. The third

group of people they're told about. The positive, the cozy, cozy

atmosphere. And then they're told about a related weakness.

So they're told the the restaurant can't accommodate large groups, so

the fact they can't accommodate large groups, that is testament to a

problem with the fact the restaurant is small and therefore, or cozy. And

that group by far give the most positive ratings. So [00:18:00] they rate

the restaurant 5.62 in terms of appeal.

So that's a 31% improvement on the no negative ad. So, so what we're

seeing here is if you want to I think replicate the power of some of these

Heinz ads, if you want to use the practical effect, if you admit a flaw, you

get a little bit of benefit. Probably 'cause it's makes you feel a bit human,

it makes you feel believable.

But if you wanna maximize the benefit, you have to be really, really

careful in the flaw that you pick. You want to find something that relates

to whatever strength you are trying to, trying to land.

MichaelAaron Flicker: It's not only that you need to find that narrow

strength that you want to that you wanna highlight, but you also have to

present it in a way that colors for people's minds why why it, it, it would

be that much more desirable to have it, or why it's so [00:19:00] much

better because of it.You know, the, how does you know? Episode one, we did Guinness.

Things come to those who wait, does that, does that get you there? Or,

that's not enough? That was an interesting use of the effect, but doesn't

fully get you there.

Richard Shotton: I'm a big fan of that one. I. It hasn't picked this

random floor. You know, it doesn't say, you know, Guinness smells a bit

funny.

It says Guinness, good things come to those weights. They're

emphasizing, like Heinz have done slowness. And in fact, I think the

Heinz a might have well inspired the Guinness. A I think Heinz came out

a little bit early with their emphasis of slowness. Yep. And I think it is true

that most times in life we know that if something takes a bit of time.

It tends to be higher quality, right? If someone knocks together a a, a

dish for dinner in two minutes, it's probably not gonna be that taste. They

haven't put love and attention and care into it. If they've spent an hour,

you know, working hard, sweating away in the [00:20:00] kitchen, it's

probably gonna be a bit nicer, you know?

Two things aren't definitely correlated. They're not kind of, one always

follows the other, but they happen enough that it creates a linkage to

people's minds. And the whole point with behavioral science is people

are pattern makers. We, we simplify life by looking for patterns. And

those patterns take on a, a, a life of our own.

So emphasizing the slowness for Guinness or Heinz? Absolutely. I think

it applies the pratfall effect almost to, its, its pinnacle.

MichaelAaron Flicker: Huh. I had not thought about this as we prepped

the episode, but all using the pratfall effect also relate it. It feels to me

connected to what we talked about earlier in the episode.

It does cause you to have to complete the idea. Good things come to

those who wait. Oh, that's because the head of the Guinness needs to

settle, you know still the slowest ketchup in town. That was Heinz's line,

you know? Oh, that [00:21:00] means it's thick and so it must be higher

quality. You are completing the thought with a Pratfall.

A strong mirror pratfall effect because you are kind of completing the

rest of the thought and solving it a little yourself. Like you talked about inthe middle study where you had to finish FAS and then you put the T in.

Do you think there's something to that?

Richard Shotton: I think certainly those two examples and I think that

that's probably the, actually as you say, it's probably quite a common,

fast their effects. I was thinking maybe with Stellar Artois, real

reassuring, expensive, they kind of complete the link for you, but I think

you're right. Most examples you have to. Do it yourself.

MichaelAaron Flicker: Avis, we try, we, we we're number two, so we try

harder.

Richard Shotton: Oh yeah. Yeah. So try harder. Yeah. They, they

complete tasks.

So I think it certainly leads to the opportunity for the generation effects.

We've got lots of good examples. And then maybe the other thing that,

those examples you've mentioned show is that there is an r as well as a

science to a great piece of copywriting. [00:22:00] We've seen with the

generation effect, a little bit of effort will make it more memorable, but

you could certainly push that too far.

You could make a really mentally draining, time consuming puzzle that

the audience is meant to resolve. And I think most people wouldn't even

bother engaging. So there is this sweet spot of. Hard enough generation

effects, but not so hard that the audience walk away and good things

come to those who wait and slowest catch up in a town.

I, I think they fall into that category of that sweet spot.

MichaelAaron Flicker: Final build on this episode 18, we looked at the

Economist and. What's interesting about comparing these ads with the

Economist ads, the economists knew very specifically that their

audiences felt they were smarter than the average cat. That they were

just a little more clever than other magazine, newspaper readers,

[00:23:00] and they play on that in their generation effect. And so it, it,

it's not only do you have to get the right copywriting if you can reveal

something about the person reading it I think that, that that's another

element of what makes it really effective.

Richard Shotton: Yeah. So I, maybe we could all agree there is a sweet

spot.For ease and difficulty in theory, but what that sweet spot is varies by

brand. If your whole premise as a brand is the audience is super

intelligent, maybe you can push that sweet spot towards the difficulty

end. If you are trying to appeal to everyone and your brand has no link

necessarily with intelligence as a value, maybe swing it to the, to the

other end.

Yeah, that idea that. You should think about using these brands through

a lens of, sorry, use these biases through a lens of what your brand

stands for. Completely agree with that. That makes, I think that's

absolutely true.

MichaelAaron Flicker: Amazing. Amazing. So we covered a [00:24:00]

lot of different studies today. We talked about a lot of different brands.

Could you summarize, bring us back to the three biggest learnings from

today?

Richard Shotton: Yeah. So we talked about. Three broad areas. We

talked firstly about the power of precision, so that's the Schindler study

with the deodorants. And Schindler showed that we are more likely to

believe and think data is accurate if it's precise rather than round.

So a really simple costless tweak the advertisers can use. The second

thing we discussed, which was on graph and cca, those Canadian

psychologists, was the generation effect, which is. If you just tell your

audience what to think about your products, there might be an issue with

memorability, but if you let them come to their own conclusion, you let

them solve that problem, generate the own answer, their own answer,

then the information tends to be much stickier.

And then the third and final thing we discussed was the practical effect.

But [00:25:00] rather than just talk about that Aronson study that we've

repeated many a time that shows if you admit a flaw, you become more

appealing. We talked about a much less well known study by boner in

Germany, and what he showed was that.

You get much bigger impact from the practical effect if you pick a flaw

that relates to your, your core strength. And I think that is where usage

of this bias goes from quite powerful to one of the most powerful tools in

an advertiser's arsenal.MichaelAaron Flicker: Lovely. As we come to an end today, Richard

we were thinking about what fun question to ask the weirdest thing.

Or the most unusual thing you've put Heinz ketchup on.

Richard Shotton: Oh my Lord. So Heinz ketchup. I'm, I'm probably

quite weird in what I put on bread. Normally chili sauce, though. Rather

than plain Heinz [00:26:00] ketchup. I think I might have destroyed my

taste buds over the last few years. So I, I think putting chili sauce on, on,

on bread is probably my, my, my weakness.

MichaelAaron Flicker: So this is a toasted piece of bread or an

untoasted piece of bread?

Richard Shotton: Toasted untoasted

MichaelAaron Flicker: doesn't matter

Richard Shotton: as long as it's spicy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about

you, where you gone with your, your heinz?

MichaelAaron Flicker: This is a, this is a northeast. United States thing,

we put ketchup on eggs. So scrambled eggs, fried egg, and ketchup is a

very common thing, and across most of America, people are poor.

They can't believe that, that we do that.

Richard Shotton: I mean, I'm must I, I, as a man who is allergic to eggs,

I'm not gonna start doing it myself, but I'm, I'm amazed that people find

that abhorrent. I think I would've thought a bit of ketchup or HP sauce

MichaelAaron Flicker: would be nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit of

sweetness. Yeah.

Well, it adds to the saltiness. Absolutely. Well, there you have it

everyone. [00:27:00] If today's episode sparked a new idea for you, do

us a favor, hit the follow button, leave a review, and share this with

someone who loves marketing as much as we all do. And if you have a

favorite behavioral science principle or example of something you see

working in the world, let us know and we'd love to feature it in a few

show episode.Until next time. I'm MichaelAaron Flicker.

Richard Shotton: And I'm Richard Shotton.

Advertisement: Behavioral Science for Brands is brought to you by

Method One, recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in

America for the third year in a row. Featured on Ink's, 5,000 list. Method

One is a proudly independent, creative, and media agency grounded in

behavioral science. They exist to make brands irresistible, helping

people discover products, services, and experiences that bring moments

of joy to their lives As behavior change experts Method [00:28:00] one

creates emotional connections that drive true brand value for their

clients.

Focusing primarily with indulgence brands in the CPG space. Find out

more@methodone.com.