Kid Art Featured On Bottle Heinz Lets Youngsters Redesign Famous Label

Faced with anemic sales growth and a stagnant market for its flagship condiment, H.J. Heinz Co. sought out its most important ketchup consumers for advice.

The problem was how to liven up the company’s stodgy trademark, the ketchup bottle’s angular, black and white label. So about 60,000 children and teenagers, who entered a contest sponsored by Heinz, submitted drawings and paintings depicting tap-dancing hot dogs, UFOs shaped like ketchup bottles, the Mona Lisa devouring a hamburger, and anything else their imaginations could conjure up.

The company plans to turn out 10 million bottles of ketchup this summer with labels based on the designs of three contest winners in age groups ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade.

The summertime promotion represents a fraction of 170 million bottles that the company plans to produce this year. But as one winner, 17-year-old Richard Rodriguez of Topeka, Kan., put it, “It’s time for a change and to maybe appeal to a younger generation,” Richard clinched the grand prize in the senior category with his image of a glistening, vine-ripened tomato, voluptuous in its purple freshness, beads of water rolling off its taut skin.

Ketchup is Heinz’s best-selling product, although company officials won’t say how much it contributes to the bottom line. Heinz leads the $700 million U.S. ketchup market with about half of total sales.

But as a mature commodity - some 97 percent of the nation’s households stock it - ketchup has few prospects for rapid growth, while competition from other condiments such as salsa has intensified.

Children and teens are the biggest ketchup consumers, said Al Banisch, Heinz’s senior product manager for retail marketing.

The company hopes the new, more colorful labels on some of its bottles will help lure families away from Hunt’s and other competitor brands. If sales improve, Heinz may expand use of the new designs and consult children in repackaging other products as well.

“I don’t know of any consumer goods industry that’s not targeting kids, from airlines to zinnia seeds,” said James McNeal, professor of marketing at Texas A&M University.

McNeal, who has written four books about children’s buying habits, said kids 12 and younger spent $17.2 billion on their own last year and influenced an additional $470 billion in their parents’ spending.

Other big companies have also redesigned products or labels with children in mind. Minute Maid Co., a division of the Coca-Cola Co., launched new labels for its Hi-C fruit drinks in 1995 that featured electric colors and flying fruit graphics.

Borden Inc. saw sales jump the same year when it introduced Crazy Milk, a line of brightly colored, fruit-flavored milk drinks aimed at children. And Binney & Smith, maker of Crayola crayons, is holding a contest asking kids to name eight new crayon colors.

Ashley Malcom, 11, a Heinz label-designing finalist, described what many children are looking for in packaging.

“I kind of like colorful things and not just labels,” said Ashley, of Miami, Okla. “If I saw a little comic strip or something colorful or weird looking, I might stop and examine it.”

The existing design, which Banisch called an icon and a badge of quality, does little for Ashley. Her idea for its successor shows a frightened tomato hiding behind a sign that reads, “Eat More Mustard.”

The winner in Ashley’s age group was Damara Dragun, of St. Helena, Calif. Damara, 12, painted a hand pouring ketchup in parallel lines that form the red stripes in an American flag.

Emarie Skelton, 6, of Marietta, Ga., grabbed first place among the youngest contestants. She painted a cartoon face with tomatoes for eyes, a pickle for a nose and an upturned, ketchupy hot dog for a smile.