One of the highlights of this year’s award-winning work at Dubai Lynx was a campaign called Heinzjack – a play on words using the brand Heinz and hijack. It was a brilliantly disruptive effort by FP7 McCann to gain publicity as an unofficial FIFA sponsor at the 2022 World Cup finals.
The man in charge of the creative masterpiece was Federico Fanti, Chief Creative Officer at FP7 McCann. He called the Grand Prix winning campaign a “beautiful disaster” listing all the things that went wrong along the way.
The Heinzjack brief was clear and simple – get Heinz Arabia noticed at the World Cup as a non-sponsor. “That’s an amazing challenge to solve,” said Fanti. “We took our advertising hats off for a moment, and thought about the brand on a human level. How can Heinz relate to people? Well, how about by literally being a person? This is how the Heinzjack was born.”
Human billboard
For the campaign Heinz Arabia turned a football fan into a human billboard that roamed the World Cup premises. The person had the surname Heinz and was dressed in a branded red jersey which prompted fans to find him and post the proof with the hashtag #FindHeinz on Instagram.
It was a huge success. For an extremely low budget the brand reached more than 7 million people, generated 14 million impressions across the various content pieces and earned over $450,000 worth of media coverage, which equated to a media ROI of 45:1.
Heinz Arabia began by recruiting people named Heinz on social media by offering football fans who bear the name with a free flight and tickets to three of the most sought-after matches of the event. After finding the fitting namesake, Thomas Heinz from Hamburg, he began sharing his journey via his own Instagram account upon arriving at Doha’s airport and introduced the campaign hashtag.
The original Heinz pulled out at the last minute due to stage fright, leaving the team little time to find a replacement. “When we finally landed on our chosen Heinz and left for Doha the shirt didn’t fit him. This was on the day we were going live. We had to take him to the tailor and add fabric. It was a beautiful disaster.”
But the best part of the stunt was the FIFA warning notice they received as Heinz wasn’t an official sponsor. “This was amazing. Just the fact that the FIFA federation noticed what we were doing proves its impact and boosted the campaign for us. We creatives were super happy with the news.”
Fanti was keen to stress that while he was the frontman, with the Heinzjack project there was an army of different talents who helped turn a simple idea into a piece of entertainment. “Because every creative leader is nothing without a committed team. And my team is really special.”
Creative hijackers
When it comes to difficult briefs, Fanti’s advice is to see the problem as an opportunity. “The more obstacles, the more interesting the ideas get. That’s why we should be creative hijackers – we should find our way around obstacles in a way that gets us noticed.”
While technology is playing an increasingly important role, talent is still an integral part of an agency. Attracting and retaining young talent is still a challenge for the industry. “When I look for talents, I look for three things: instinct, passion, and a bit of stupidity. Be unapologetically stupid to make your work better. Every 10 stupid ideas will give you one amazing one. So don’t be afraid of being stupid. You need to go through being stupid to come up with something smart.”
Follow trends
Fanti says the trick nowadays is to create ads that don’t feel like ads, but that instead engage the audience. “The modern consumer is much smarter and has a very good bulls**t radar. That’s why ads shouldn’t just sell an empty promise. We need to prove it, act on it and include the public in it.”
The Italian is a big believer in storytelling to get a message across, and loves to play with different formats as advertisers battle with the shorter attention spans of consumers. His motto is that the easiest way to reach your consumer is to talk with them, not at them.
He also advises his team to stay on topic of pop culture and what’s trending online to stay relevant. “Society and culture are always evolving. If you stay up-to-date, advertising will evolve with every change.” Wise words.
