Heinz Celebrates Halloween with Terrifyingly Natural Tomatoes

Heinz, a world leader in tomato products and sauces, has launched a campaign to ‘prank’ viewers this Halloween. Devised by Wunderman Thompson Spain, the campaign, ‘For a 100% Natural Halloween’, launches with a series of interactive OOH billboards and social posts to showcase the natural tomatoes that go into Heinz products.   

On first glance, the social posts and billboards appear to be traditional pieces of content – think ASMR recipe videos which reveal the secret recipe for Heinz Ketchup, or a series of optical illusions in keeping with the Halloween theme – but if viewers watch for long enough, they’ll be ‘pranked’ by the sudden apparition of a horrifying tomato.

Thiago Rapp, Kraft Heinz Head of Communications and Brand Building, said: “As a well-loved brand, Halloween was another opportunity for us to lean into a cultural moment to surprise and delight our customers. Wunderman Thompson Spain approached us with a fun way to tout our tomato expertise and showcase there’s nothing terrifying about the tomatoes that go into our products.”

“It used to be thought that there’s nothing terrifying about a tomato, but when shot in a certain light, some tomatoes can be extremely scary. Even without the use of post-production, we were able to highlight the horror on their ‘faces’. By using the right product – the same variety that goes into Heinz Ketchup – we’ve been able to create an international campaign that’s as scary, and natural, as possible,” added Paco Badia, ECD at Wunderman Thompson Spain.

The team worked with photographer Josep Maria Roca who cast hundreds of natural tomatoes in the campaign, carefully studying and shooting them to highlight the natural ‘terror’ in their faces. No tomatoes were harmed in the making of this campaign. In fact, all of the tomatoes that featured in the campaign were used to make gazpacho once they had been photographed.  

The campaign is now running across Spain, Chile, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.