Heinz
Redefining a 150-year-old brand’s digital presence
( Services )
- Brand & Media
Boasting a product range of more than 5,700 varieties, Heinz is a much-loved household name, with its beans, sauces, and soups a staple in kitchens across the world.
After undergoing a comprehensive rebrand, Heinz turned to DEPT® to accelerate the digital expression of its refreshed brand identity.
Assessing the landscape
Delivering a design solution for a brand with thousands of products to showcase and would be rolled out across more than 18 markets required detailed planning.
Before designing the solution, our expert team was sure to understand the nuances, needs, and language of each market. We worked alongside the global client and each of the local market teams, as well as the technical development partner, to achieve the desired outcome.
In collaboration with the client team, we first took an important step back to explore many different ways to amplify the beloved Heinz brands in a digital environment.
We explored each corner of the brief, free from technical or structural constraints, to identify important visual techniques and approaches that best reflect the brand(s) online.
Developing the design system
We aimed to showcase each of the individual identities and personalities of Heinz’s well-known and well-loved, brands, and products—Beanz, Pasta, Sauces, Soups, and more—under an all-encompassing Heinz umbrella across multiple, differentiated markets. This meant the work we delivered needed to be robust and flexible enough to roll out seamlessly.
A design system was identified as the perfect tool to bring structure and consistency to Heinz’s refreshed web presence.
Design systems allow for scale, efficiency, and consistency of branding. They are the best-practice solution for managing design at scale, providing a universal understanding of the brand’s design principles and their applications. This ensures every element of the digital estate meets brand standards, enforcing a strong identity across all digital touchpoints.
With a solid brand identity, a clear understanding of the direction of travel, and a concrete decision on the solution to be implemented, we designed a series of modules, components, and wireframes to form the pattern library.
Once we had these creative tools in place, we built in the structural and technical elements to mold everything into a clear, robust, flexible, and accessible design system that truly allows the Heinz brands to shine online.
Continual optimization
Following the success of this project, we continue to work with Heinz’ global and local market teams to deliver evolutions of their digital estate, as well as market specific digital campaigns, and help them to stay ahead of the pace of change in the online world.
““DEPT® were the first people we called—they’d done such a great job on our Bull’s-Eye brand sites already. The team has really brought the Heinz brand to life in digital – building on our recent brand refresh. They are a breath of fresh air to work with. They simplify, move quickly and find quick solutions to all challenges that we throw at them.”
”Henry Hepworth, EMEA Digital Marketing Manager, Heinz
