French’s vs. Heinz: This Ketchup War Is A Public Relations Mess

Both French’s and Heinz are hugely popular American condiment brands whose products fly off Canadian store shelves, yet the pressure to buy one company’s ketchup, and boycott the other, is a war taking on new heights in Canada.

(Hey, even Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne jumped on the bandwagon, admittedly, a little too late. But more on that later.)

Here’s a background on how the ketchup showdown began.

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Back in June 2014, Heinz shut down their ketchup producing operations in Leamington, Ontario and moved to the United States, thereby causing economic turmoil to Leamington tomato farmers who were no longer the food giant’s suppliers. Then along came French’s announcing in January this year it would start using only Leamington tomatoes to make its ketchup, a new product that launched nine months earlier.

This move cause a bit of a stir in Canada, prompted by national pride and a desire to support local farmers. A social media movement was born encouraging Canadians to only buy French’s ketchup and boycott the well-known taste of Heinz. (Nevermind the fact that French’s ketchup is manufactured in both Toronto and Ohio.) The movement proved successful because French’s reported a huge surge in ketchup sales in the following weeks.

Fast forward to mid-March and Canada’s premier grocery store, Loblaws, announces that it will no longer stock French’s ketchup because it isn’t selling. All hell breaks loose. Quite literally.

Canadians declare a full on war against Loblaws for not supporting local farmers and threats of a boycott ensue, lead by Liberal MPP Mike Colle. Within 24 hours, Loblaws reverses its decision citing customer feedback as the reason.

The next day media rumors circulate — based on a leaked internal Loblaws memo — that the grocery store lied to the public, and the real reason they were going to remove French’s ketchup from their shelves was because it was outselling their own President’s Choice brand of ketchup. Loblaws calls the memo “unofficial” and denies the reasons mentioned in the document.

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There are two things we’d like to point out about this Canadian ketchup saga from a public relations perspective.

Firstly, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne acted too slow to show her support of French’s ketchup and Leamington farmers. The movement to buy French’s ketchup over Heinz started in January, and yet she waited until Loblaws made a stupid move in March to tweet a picture of herself buying French’s ketchup at a Sobey’s grocery store.

Loblaws is not the enemy. As a company, they are a heck of a lot more Canadian than Heinz. Why didn’t Wynne tweet the same picture earlier in the year to get Canadians away from Heinz? After all, her government was busy investing $2.5 million into the Leamington plant that produces the tomato paste sold to French’s.

Secondly, Loblaws could have handled their public relations mess a bit better. Perhaps when their memo was leaked they would have been better off admitting that competition to their PC ketchup was the reason they planned to remove French’s ketchup? Then Loblaws could have pointed out all the ways that their company is decidedly Canadian — from manufacturing to suppliers to farmers. Their public insistence that their decision was based on French’s low sales doesn’t make sense when French’s president recently announced a huge surge in ketchup sales since the movement began.

All in all, the Canadian ketchup war is really only interesting because it shows the degree to which Canadians have nationalistic pride — and because it highlights just how important public relations is for the private sector and governments that throw their support behind the private sector.

Watch your words. Time your actions. And don’t be too late to the party.