Behind the Scenes of Kraft-Heinz's In-House Agency Setup

In 2021, Kraft Heinz announced plans to expand The Kitchen, the in-house marketing agency it launched in 2020 to create data-led social campaigns at “the speed of culture.” Fast forward two years and the internal creative shop has expanded beyond North America into eight markets internationally, including Europe, Australia, China, Brazil and more. It’s also evolved beyond delivering social snippets. The Kitchen now services a chunk of the group’s 335 brands with a model that combines data, tech and analytics with content creation capabilities. In the process, it’s helping to drive a culture of creativity and innovation internally, making Kraft Heinz $1 billion marketing spend “work harder.” “What I’ve discovered is if you have an internal culture of creativity that is super strong, you can afford to be fluid in the way you manage agencies,” she told Adweek, saying The Kitchen is helping the business test and learn faster than ever before, and flex its marketing muscle. [The Kitchen] is making our marketing investment work much harder because we can do things in a more agile way.—Cristina Kenz, international chief growth and sustainability officer, Kraft Heinz In 2020, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) found over half of brands (57%) had brought creative in-house. However, the complexity of the building, and maintaining, internal teams has led many brands to adapt a hybrid model in recent years. Kraft Heinz joins Unilever and PepsiCo in doing so; combining data hubs with creative talent in the process. “We have built a backbone of data and connectivity that we can lean into social conversations, test ads before they go to market and gauge consideration,” she said. Cooking up a storm Over the last 12 months, The Kitchen has developed 20,000 assets for platforms including TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. These have delivered 6 billion impressions and a 140% uplift in ROI on 2021’s marketing spend. One notable campaign was a quick-fire tomato-based creative execution from Heinz Brazil riffing on Rihanna’s Twitter announcement that she would be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. The pastiche was created in 30 minutes and earned 13 million free organic impressions on Twitter.A digital OOH campaign in the same market, which celebrated the anniversary of Rio de Janeiro with a cultural play on regional accents, generated a 145% month-on-month sales increase across Heinz brands. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Heinz Brasil (@heinz_br) Another, for Heinz Soup in Australia, saw 70 static and animated creative variants for social, out of home (OOH) and display. Cost savings from not using external agencies for the latter were between $5000 and $10,000. “It’s making our marketing investment work much harder because we can do things in a more agile way,” said Kenz, saying the agency had first-party data at its fingertips which could help it test-and-learn faster versus briefing an agency to create social or video content. “That can feel super slow [in comparison] and cost a lot of money,” she added. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Heinz ANZ (@heinz_au) She is adamant the CPG will always need creative partners for blue sky, strategic thinking and building on work like “Vegetarian Vampire” and its recent tongue-in-cheek pasta sauce campaign from Wunderman Thompson Spain. Then, the Kitchen will deliver what is “culturally relevant” for each market as an extension of this. For instance, it gave employees the chance to win a trip to Romania for submitting spooky TikTok content for the Black Garlic Mayo Vampire campaign. “It’s helping us connect our brands with our people, which is something I don’t think we’ve always done well,” said Kenz A culture of creative excellence Though food conglomerates are not renowned for their creativity, The Kitchen is part of Kenz's play to change that. In 2020, Kenz helped launch what she likened to an internal Cannes Lions or D&AD-type scheme: the ACE Awards, which celebrate the teams delivering “best-in-class marketing” in-house. This year’s jurors include Anomaly executive creative director Dave Douglas and Bud’s chief marketing officer (CMO) Matt Che. The Philadelphia and Lunchables owner is not alone in facing supply chain challenges, along with the thorny proposition that raising prices amid higher inflation and in the face of a cost-of-living crisis could crimp demand. This is helping us connect our brands with our people too.—Cristina Kenz, international chief growth and sustainability officer, Kraft Heinz However, it’s leaning on brand equity to see it through, committing to better quality marketing to make sure its products are being lifted off shelves and into consumer’s shopping carts. It’s a strategy that’s already paying off, in Q3 the business reported a surprise rise in its global revenues with net sales increasing to $6.51 billion in October 2022 versus $6.32 billion in 2021. It's hoping coupling innovation with its marketing efforts will open further revenue streams in the long term. One such project, which also brings into play the “sustainability” part of Kenz's title, was a special “Marz Edition” ketchup developed out of The Kitchen in the U.S. in partnership with the Aldrin Space Institute. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Heinz (@heinz) Two years in the making, the celestial condiment was made with tomatoes grown by recreating similar soil, temperature and water conditions on Earth to those found on Mars. The team of scientists behind the secret sauce, which is the product of two years of research and development, published three research papers on the process. They said the achievement “showcased the possibilities are for long-term food production beyond Earth.” “That’s just a small example of the magic that can happen when you bring creativity, innovation and sustainability together. The creative muscle is there, so it’s much easier to marry it all up,” she said. Heinz Puts Super Bowl’s Use of Roman Numerals on Trial As she looks ahead to 2023, Kenz said her next focus will be driving innovation at scale across international markets.“We need to be brave and empower people internally for that to happen,” she said.

In-House Agencies

Kraft-Heinz Says In-House Agency Is Making Its Ad Spend ‘Work Harder’

International chief growth officer Cristina Kenz gives a behind-the-scenes look at The Kitchen's expansion

Rebecca Stewart

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Rebecca Stewart