Yesterday was my wife Pam’s and my 4th wedding anniversary and to celebrate it we went to Bert’s Diner for a cheeseburger. (Longer story as to the significance of us getting married and the cheeseburger but I’ll explain that some other time.) When our burgers came and I went to use the ketchup, sure enough it was Heinz and it wouldn’t come out of the bottle. Thinking about Carly Simon, I used the knife to make it move. Today I had to smile when I saw Seth Godin’s blog talking about Heinz ketchup:
In a discussion on why Heinz has such high market share for ketchup in the Pittsburgh area, one commenter posts, “It’s just better ketchup. Their other products may be closer in quality to the competition, but for Ketchup nobody compares. When you go to a restaurant and they have a different kind, it feels you are eating at some cheap cafeteria.”
This is really telling, but probably not the in the way Matt intended.
Heinz doesn’t make better ketchup. Heinz makes better Heinz ketchup. There’s a huge difference.
If you define ketchup the way most people do, you define it as, “the ketchup I grew up with.” Or to be more specific, “the ketchup my mom served me, the one that I was allowed to serve myself when I turned three…”
One thing that marketers do is sell us a feeling, not a set of molecules or bits. When you spend $3 on a bottle of ketchup, that’s what you’re buying. And Matt and the rest of us are so brainwashed we rationalize it as ‘better ketchup.’
This is really telling, but probably not the in the way Matt intended.
Heinz doesn’t make better ketchup. Heinz makes better Heinz ketchup. There’s a huge difference.
If you define ketchup the way most people do, you define it as, “the ketchup I grew up with.” Or to be more specific, “the ketchup my mom served me, the one that I was allowed to serve myself when I turned three…”
One thing that marketers do is sell us a feeling, not a set of molecules or bits. When you spend $3 on a bottle of ketchup, that’s what you’re buying. And Matt and the rest of us are so brainwashed we rationalize it as ‘better ketchup.’