Being around since 1869, Heinz is bound to have some outdated ways of advertising in the past. Something that might have been attention-grabbing and intriguing during the Dark Ages doesn’t have the same effect in 2024.
Recently, Heinz released two ads. One was advertising their marinara sauce while the other was advertising their ketchup. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal, the way they went about it was odd. The ad for the marinara sauce features a Black bride sitting next to her White in-laws and her husband. Her Black mother is also shown, but one parent is missing. Having the bride’s father be absent emphasizes the stereotype of the absent, Black father. This might not have been Heinz’s intention, but to many, it came off that way.
Now, I am in no way, shape or form saying that someone could not have a father or might be from a single-parent household, but the fact that Heinz made the Black bride have the missing parent and had the father as parent missing reinforces a harmful stereotype that isn’t true for all Black families.
If Heinz had made the groom have one parent, people may have been talking about this ad but in a radically inclusive way because, like I said before, there are families with one parent, but it won’t be backing a racist stereotype at the same time.
The second advertisement was meant to gain traction for the Joker premiere; however, Heinz did not and still does not have an official partnership with Joker: Folie à Deux. The ad shows three people with ketchup smeared haphazardly around their lips. Again, at face value that doesn’t sound bad at all. A company using a viral concept to get more attention for their product, but the history of blackface comes in when you see two White people with exaggerated lip features.
Blackface is when a White person paints their face black to make fun of the natural features of African and African-American people. Clowns were originally blackface. They have exaggerated, red lips, the afro and clowns were originally a black or brown painted skin tone.
I asked people in Wilson’s S.T.A.R (Stand Together Against Racism) club what they thought of Heinz’s poorly made advertisements. S.T.A.R member Tarissa Wall-Weaver stated that she felt the ad was sneaky and “she didn’t know about the history of blackface.” Many people don’t because we as a society have ceased to talk about it, but you have to remember that it wasn’t happening that long ago. Plus, some people on the internet think it’s still a funny thing to do.
Another S.T.A.R member, Hannah Thomas, said Heinz might be doing these ads for rage bait. According to OnlineDrea, rage bait is content that’s specifically designed to make you angry or frustrated in order to drive engagement. Heinz using racial stereotypes to increase press around their product only surprises me because Heinz has a DEI section in their company. A DEI section’s job for any business is to make sure advertisements, statements and products that are being given out are inclusive to all people. So the fact that Heinz published not one but two ads that both have racial bias makes me question if Heinz’s DEI section is just for show.
I don’t think Heinz did this by accident. In both of their apology statements, Heinz says they plan to “listen, learn and improve to avoid this happening again in the future.” This was after the first ad so we know they didn’t change.
With that being said, we live in a world where money is power. If you don’t have money you’re nothing, and if you do, you are everything. Was Heinz doing this to make more money? Probably. Did Heinz realize how people would see these ads before they published them? Maybe they didn’t care as long as people were talking about it. Maybe Heinz really is ignorant of history.
My question to Heinz is: was it worth it?
