Heinz uses AI to reiterate association with ketchup

When DALL-E was given variations of the word 'ketchup', it made pictures that were variations of Heinz bottles.

All over the world, brand managers want their brands to be synonymous with the product category they belong to. When you think of noodles, Maggi may be the first name that pops into your head. When you think of chocolate, it could be Cadbury.

US-based Heinz has released a new ad which relies on that same brand recall - the fact that in many parts of the world, Heinz is synonymous with ketchup.

The latest ad has been created with DALL-E, an artificial intelligence (AI) system that creates art and generates realistic images based on text descriptions entered by the user. The ad shows that when DALL-E was asked to generate images of a ketchup bottle, it automatically gravitated towards creating pictures of Heinz bottles in different styles, in different time periods.

According to The Drum, this is the latest ad in a campaign released last year, in which Heinz asked random individuals to 'draw ketchup'. Their artistic skills may not have been something to boast about, but the majority of them drew different variants of the Heinz bottle.

As far as the AI ketchup campaign goes, the same report mentions that the campaign will be running on social media, and will feature an out-of-home (OOH) activation in downtown Toronto, Canada.