I’m not at all pleased with The Heinz contest. A lot of people could be disappointed if they don’t win, and could claim the same thing. However, read on – I doubt that I’m the only one who had this happen:

Be sure to see the entry at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8uWEzfXDvI,
then read on.

Received from Heinz:

Dear Person Deemed the Entrant,

We must regretfully inform you that your commercial submission to the Heinz Top This TV Challenge has been rejected because you did one or more things that our lawyers said you couldn’t do. They’re listed in the Official Rules. But here are the no-nos we see most:

• The commercial isn’t 30 seconds, and nothing ticks off the TV network guys like an ad that’s too long or too short.

• The commercial contains “copyrighted material”—stuff like music or video that somebody else created and/or owns.

• The commercial contains inappropriate content that your mother may not like and we can’t show on TV.

• The commercial contains another company’s name, trademark or logo.

“Entrant” (me) says:

1. You can see “:30” clearly on the YouTube display;
2. Absolutely no copyrighted material is in the video – the soundtrack was performed specifically for the video, is entirely original, and I have permissions/release for it – just like the Official Rules want (how else could the soundtrack perfectly match the action?);
3. Inappropriate material?
4. Absolutely no logos, etc. appear except for Heinz’s! Look hard - there is absolutely nothing else to be seen that resembles a trademark, etc.

Now, one word comes to mind when I think Heinz: BOGUS! Someone else has suggested “lazy” as an operative word.

Consumer-generated commercials are a good thing, right? I did a spot for Heinz that explores this issue. Check it out and you'll see if we should leave commercials up to the professionals?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNCIScpQ8dQ

Dove did this too, but the Dove ad came off nicely and seems like a regular one.

Dove the soap people and not the chocolate.

If it's a contest and you win not only a ketchup for life but also, say a large sum of money and/or the opportunity to work with an ad agency or be in a ketchup commercial or something, then why not?
Then again... Ugh, commercialism!

No different than jingle contests of days of yore, 50+ years ago.

I only use organic catsup because I don't care to eat high fructose corn syrup; so they can run all the ads they want and never sell to me.

We would anyone hate this idea. It's completely harmless, it saves us from horrible advertising campaigns spawned from focus groups and over priced ad firms, and it gets people to create.

Where is the problem? How could anyone rag on anyone for doing this sort of thing? This is the only possible approach at advertising in general that makes me even want to watch a commercial. I want to see what someone came up with.

John Kerry badgered Theresa into doing this. If it works, he's going to try the same for his '08 campaign.

I think it's a great idea. And it always kills me when these companies are accused of being lazy or of having run out of ideas when they hold these contests. It's not like they fired their advertising agency and said "well, let's just see what anyone sitting at home can come up with". This whole ideas was concocted by their advertising agency.

You're Heinz ketchup. There's practically nothing you can do that can get you "buzz". It's not like beer where you can come up with the craziest stuff. It's ketchup. (or Doritos or whatever). So if you can do anything to liven up your product's perception in the world (such as a contest allowing viewers at home to come up with a commercial) then do it!

And just to prove my point, here we are, on a TV blog, talking about Heinz ketchup. And if a few of the already-submitted commercials were actually clever, I'm sure there would be tons of buzz about that. It apparently just so happens that they haven't gotten anything good yet (and may not.... it's ketchup after all...)

The Doritos ad that aired during the Superbowl was pretty funny. The thing about ketchup is that it doesn't seem to have the built in audience that would really make ads. Honestly, I think people eat ketchup but aren't as dedicated to the Heinz brand of ketchup as the eaters of Doritos are. Same goes for Dodge - if you own one you're probably fanatical about them. I don't see the same for ketchup, so to me it seems cheap. I don't mind the other user ads.