{"id":1775,"date":"2020-02-08T11:51:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T11:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1775"},"modified":"2021-06-23T11:22:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T10:22:23","slug":"what-a-2017-heinz-campaign-can-tell-us-about-the-cultural-zeitgeist-at-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/what-a-2017-heinz-campaign-can-tell-us-about-the-cultural-zeitgeist-at-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"What a 2017 Heinz campaign can tell us about the cultural zeitgeist at the time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Beanz meanz Heinz” has been an advertising slogan for Heinz Baked Beans since 1967. It’s a classic, simple motto from advertising days of yore where not everything had to be a pun or fake cutesy copy on a smoothie<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in 2017, Heinz launched a campaign to celebrate 50 years of this slogan. It was a great, simple campaign – a website that let you add a custom name to a can to order for yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"an<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sure, it was a bit of a rip-off of Coca-Cola’s ‘share a coke’ campaign from 2013. But it’s fun, harmless, and a source of that oh-so-valuable user-generated content<\/strong> that’s all the rage in marketing right now. (As a marketer myself I can promise you, it can massively outperform original owned content).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these things typically go wrong. Lest we forget another 2017 campaign, where Walkers invited fans to send in a selfie of themselves for Gary Lineker to hold up, for a chance to win football tickets. As the BBC reported: “within hours… their crisp-eater-in-chief Gary Lineker has been pictured clutching photos of Fred West and Harold Shipman in online videos on Twitter.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In short, the general public are not to be trusted. But Heinz are no fools! For their name-on-a-can campaign, they compiled a do-not-allow list of various names that they wouldn’t let you put on a can. Smart stuff, Heinz!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And by taking a look at the code running the (now inactive) site, we can get a fascinating glimpse of what those savvy marketers wanted to avoid. And more than that, the list is a reflection of where we were at in 2017. What were our biggest fears as a society? Let’s take a look, shall we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The full list is 3,367 terms strong. All the usual curses are in there, along with some… interesting variants. We have both asshat<\/strong> and assclown<\/strong> for instance – I guess they couldn’t get wildcard characters to work properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there’s also a bunch of seemingly innocuous stuff in there: children, internet, kiss.<\/strong> Not quite sure what they were trying to avoid but sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up we have the ‘this would be embarrassing’ category. These are things that would look bad for Heinz to have printed on a can about themselves. In the list, we find sugar, salt, & obesity<\/strong>. This is fair enough, I suppose but probably overkill. Heinz Baked Beans aren’t regarded as a life-giving superfood, but there’s one of the food industry’s lesser ills – right? Oh well, can’t blame them for being paranoid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s at this point I wonder how exactly this list was made. I’ve had to implement blocklists before on moderated sites and it’s a gruelling task, sitting down and thinking up slurs. It’s much easier to just import a list someone else has written, which is probably what they’ve done for the bulk of this. But it’s the ones they’ve added in extra that I find fascinating. What didn’t Heinz want us to know about offshore<\/strong> or Scotland<\/strong>? What didn’t they want us to know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The really interesting stuff comes in the ones they’ve added because of sensitive events. In the list we find:<\/p>\n\n\n\n